


Things To Do In The Elemental Nations When You're Dead

by JumpingJackFlash



Category: Naruto, Original Work
Genre: Gen, He's a good kid, Morally Ambiguous Character, Non-Consensual Drug Use, also the oc has a sort of paleolithic morality, and sometimes your favorite song comes on, drugs are like background music as far as he's concerned, he just thinks murder is nbd, let's be honest they're all morally ambiguous, not that it bothers mirya any, orochimaru is his new favorite band, sometimes the muzak is annoying, that's what happens when you write cute akatsuki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26977720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumpingJackFlash/pseuds/JumpingJackFlash
Summary: Itachi's first glance tells him Kisame is genuinely relaxed, lounging at the low table with a nail clipper and a bottle of umeshu, so he can take his time studying the other person in the room: a skinny red-haired boy sprawled starfish-like on a futon, covers shoved aside and pillow soaked in drool, wearing nothing but — “Is that my underwear?”“Well, mine would be too big,” Kisame says reasonably. “No need to whisper, he’s dead to the world.”“Mine should be too big as well.” He’s fourteen, not… whatever this boy is, eight or nine.“Safety pins.”“Why do you have my underwear? What happened to his?” It’s a silly thing to get stuck on, but he can’t seem to let it go. His relationship with Kisame is not one that admits to underwear. There’s a professional distance. This is outside his comfort zone.
Relationships: Hoshigaki Kisame & Original Character(s), Hoshigaki Kisame & Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Itachi & Original Character(s)
Comments: 92
Kudos: 232





	1. Dazed & Confused In Fire Country

**Author's Note:**

> hi! first of all, if you're a reader of mine from way back when, and you're wondering where i've been and why i'm back now... well, i'm not going to disclose my whole medical history, so i'll just say: spines are bad, mkay? become a cephalopod before it's too late.
> 
> i know oc-centered fics aren't very popular and i won't be the slightest bit offended if this doesn't get much attention. i don't have any plot planned, i'm just throwing the protagonist of my original project at the naruto verse for funsies. i basically have like... one funny future scene in mind... other than that we'll find out what happens together. your guess is as good as mine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kisame spoils his pet sword so much.

Kisame isn’t much of a sensor. It’s Samehada that gives him the ability when they’re fighting together. With the sentient sword bundled up to sleep in its bandage swaddling, he’s no more aware of chakra signatures than any resonably alert shinobi. But he’d have to be a damn civilian to miss the big sloppy wad of chakra off to the side of the road. He half wonders if he’s stumbled across one of the bijuu, and will have to decide whether to capture it years ahead of schedule.

He stops and puts his hand to Samehada’s hilt. The sword’s strange, simple mind brushes groggily against his, annoyed at being woken, but perks up as it smells the new chakra. The impression is conveyed to him that this chakra tastes like whale. No, seal. Eh, kinda seal AND whale. _How on earth do you know what those taste like?_ he muses, but the answering impression isn’t something he can interpret. 

Whoever is lurking over there in the trees, waving their sea mammal chakra around like they’re trying to get rid of it, isn’t moving very fast, but they’re moving, not lying in wait or something. Not being quiet either. On top of the blatant rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs, there’s even a muttered “Whoops?” and a tired-sounding giggle.

Still, Kisame waits. He’s not in a hurry. He doubts Itachi will arrive at their rendezvous point sooner than tomorrow morning. They split up to take on two missions at once, since it’s probably not a good idea to take Itachi anywhere near Konoha less than a year after his spectacular crime, and the missions weren’t remotely difficult for shinobi of their caliber. Kisame finished his sabotage of river traffic in half an hour, and that was with taking his time and having fun. Itachi’s mission to subtly delay a courier probably only took half a second, with those eyes of his. Genjutsu of a mislabeled crossroads or something. He’ll show up looking bored and icy and pretending he’s not relieved he didn’t have to kill anyone this time. The kid thinks Kisame doesn’t know he’s not as bloodthirsty as his reputation says he is. It’s cute. The point is, this is a bit of a vacation, it’s a warm day, and Kisame doesn’t mind standing around in the dappled shade of the ridiculous Hashirama trees to listen to Whale-Chakra-San trip over every root they meet.

After what has to be at least ten minutes, there emerges from the undergrowth just about the gaudiest little figure Kisame has ever seen outside a daimyo’s court. The child of uncertain gender is wearing a long fur coat, dyed indigo, edged with bright red and yellow embroidered bands, belted with red leather and several varicolored cords, and fringed with dozens more cords, strings of beads, and colorful ribbons, falling from the shoulders all the way to the hem. The coat sags and drips, festooned with brown moss and rotting reeds. The child’s bright copper hair is long, intricately braided with beads and gold ornaments, bedraggled, and wet. More gold stuff shows at throat and wrist, there are big gaudy earrings, a thick circlet set with cloudy red stones, and overall the whole business gives the impression of a giant festival-colored string mop that’s been thrown through a jewelry store into a pond.

The way the kid stumbles and shivers, they’re crosseyed with fatigue or fever or something. No threat, anyway. Only when Kisame moves does the kid notice him. Watches him approach without a hint of fear, though maybe a little awe. They stop and wait for him, and when he’s close, they blink pale blue eyes at him and smile.

Kisame considers several opening questions. _What the hell are you wearing? Fur in this heat, are you crazy? Why are you wet? What’s wrong with you, and is it contagious? Why in the world does Samehada say your chakra tastes like whale? Didn’t anybody teach you to hold it in? It’s just everywhere. It’s embarrassing. You’re going to attract every sensor on the continent going around like that._

The little clown gets their question out first, in hopeful and delighted tones: “Are you a god?”

====

The lonely crossroad inn is peaceful beneath the paling stars, the air cool and damp but holding the promise of another hot day once the sun rises. Itachi hesitates, staring up at the one lit window on the second floor. He’s trying to figure out why Kisame isn’t alone. 

There’s a second person there, on the opposite side of the room from Kisame, both of them holding still. The Sharingan can’t see chakra through walls very well; all he can tell of this second signature is that it’s child-sized and quiescent. That doesn’t guarantee it’s not a threat. He knows, much better than he wants to, how young killers can be. But considering Kisame’s love of battle, he supposes if there was going to be a fight it would already have happened. Try as he might, he can’t think of any reason why Kisame would’ve picked up a child. It’s too soon to collect jinchuuriki. Kisame isn’t the charitable type, nor is he a pervert. They haven’t taken any kidnapping missions. They’re not recruiting at the moment, not that he knows of. What can this possibly be about?

While paranoia has always served him well, at this point he’s just getting eaten by mosquitoes for no reason. He leaps lightly to the narrow balcony and slips in the window. 

His first glance tells him Kisame is genuinely relaxed, lounging at the low table with a nail clipper and a bottle of umeshu, so he can take his time studying the other person in the room: a skinny red-haired boy sprawled starfish-like on a futon, covers shoved aside and pillow soaked in drool, wearing nothing but — “Is that my underwear?”

“Well, mine would be too big,” Kisame says reasonably. “No need to whisper, he’s dead to the world.”

“Mine should be too big as well.” He’s fourteen, not… whatever this boy is, eight or nine.

“Safety pins.”

“Why do you have my underwear? What happened to his?” It’s a silly thing to get stuck on, but he can’t seem to let it go. His relationship with Kisame is not one that admits to underwear. There’s a professional distance. This is outside his comfort zone.

“It was in my laundry, no idea how long it’s been there. Have you eaten? I saved you nimono and a couple rice balls.”

Itachi doesn’t sigh, because he isn’t expressive like that, but the impression is there in the slow way he turns to the table. Still, he’s not angry, only confused, and Kisame is the most tolerable of his new colleagues. “Thank you, Kisame-san,” he says politely, and doesn’t speak again until he’s finished the cold stewed vegetables and rice. Kisame returns to his manicure, trimming rough callus and hangnails that might catch on clothing or be a distraction, touching up the lacquer. When he finishes eating, Itachi takes the bottle of remover and gets to scrubbing off the chipped black stuff he has on. “May I borrow your lacquer? I’ve run out of mine.”

“Are you sure you want to match?” the swordsman rumbles with gentle humor. “What if the other missing-nin make fun of us?” Itachi’s flat look only makes his smile wider, but he hands over the bottle of purple.

When he first joined Akatsuki, Itachi thought the nail polish part of the uniform was rather silly, but it actually does help keep his nails from peeling or splitting after exposure to harsh weather, fire jutsu, and so on. Even Konan can’t make him care what color he uses, though.

After fifteen minutes of silence, Kisame finally gets tired of waiting for him to ask, and says, “He walked up to me in the road and asked if I’m a god. He thinks he’s dead and this is the afterlife.”

“Why is he in our room?” That’s the thing that most needs explanation, in Itachi’s opinion.

Kisame ignores that. “Wait until you see what he was wearing. As far as I can gather — which isn’t very far, because he was drugged out of his tiny mind — his clan decked him in gold and drowned him in a bog. He was supposed to ask the gods to save them. He’s declared himself my servant in exchange for sending them good fishing.”

“Kisame.”

“If I hadn’t let Samehada have a snack, his chakra would be announcing us to the world right now. He’s got tons of it and no control at all. Didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about when I mentioned it, and his calluses look like boat work, not weapons, so I’m guessing he was raised civilian. He must have pulled some kind of instinctive teleportation jutsu on the verge of death.” 

“Kisame, are you saying a civilian child invented something like Senju Tobirama’s Hiraishin while drowning?”

“Why not? Red hair, blue eyes, outrageous chakra, sealing tattoos, comes from a lost clan starving by the sea somewhere? I honestly think ‘ignorant remnant of the Uzu diaspora instinctively teleports somewhere warm’ is more likely than — I don’t even know — someone dunking a kid in ice water and shoving him at us for kicks.” He finally turns to Itachi. Looks him in the eye, unafraid of the Sharingan, which Itachi has always appreciated. “He was hypothermic. Do you know how hot it was today?”

“I’m wearing the same thing you are,” Itachi says dryly.

“Exactly. He was wearing a fur coat, fur-lined boots, and thick wool clothes. Samehada says his chakra tastes like whale. They eat whale in Snow Country, don’t they?”

Itachi studies the boy again. Pale as paper, and thin in a way that says famine rather than growth spurt. There are blue-green geometric shapes tattooed around his bony wrists, and a series of dots, spaced in triangles, on top of one foot. It obviously means something, but the pattern is completely alien. Itachi supposes they _could_ be primitive seals. Sections of his hair are kinked as if they were recently in braids. Itachi blinks at Kisame. “Did you brush his hair?”

Kisame shrugs. “Kid fell asleep in the bath,” he says, as if that’s an explanation.

Itachi is beginning to suspect that Hoshigaki ‘Sharks Eat Each Other In The Womb’ Kisame is not as heartless as he claims to be. Although maybe he just likes being called a god.


	2. Breakfast of the Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi and Mirya are hair twinsies

The morning sounds that wake Casimir aren’t the ones he’s used to, and it takes him a moment to remember why. He lies there rubbing the crusties out of his eyes, yawning, scratching various places, enjoying the cushy bed and the band of sunlight gently roasting his shins, and then it comes back to him: he’s dead.

He sits up suddenly, staring around, but he’s put his face in a sunbeam and he can’t see shit. It’s full daylight and he hasn’t begun his duties! He promised the shark god his service, and he’s already screwing it up! “Oh no,” he mutters to himself, digging through the heavenly-soft-but-way-too-warm bedding in search of his clothing. “Oh no, oh crap.”

“You’re safe,” says a soft voice. “Don’t panic.”

He freezes for a second, then slowly scoots his butt back toward the wall until he’s not blinded by the sun anymore. Now he can see the room he’s in, and it brings back vague memories of the night before, when the shark god brought him to this graceful wooden lodge with its mossy tile roofs and little red bridge. There had been delicious food and hot tea, and a steaming bath, and he must’ve fallen asleep because he doesn’t remember who dressed him in these pinned-together undershorts — he hopes it wasn’t the god himself, that’d be really embarrassing. The shark god is sleeping on another soft mattress nearby. The person who spoke is sitting in a meditating pose with his back to the wall by the window. A boy a bit older than himself, very beautiful, but of course a god would be — even the shark god is handsome, despite his sharky looks. He can tell the beautiful boy isn’t a servant like the lady in the pink dress who brought the food, because of the strong magic surrounding him. Also he’s wearing the same red and black coat the god wears. It’s a very cool coat and Casimir wants one.

He makes his voice humble: “Do you know where my clothes are, sir? I promised to serve the shark god and I —“ He looks around once more, distress rising again. “Well, he didn’t tell me what he wants done, but maybe I should make breakfast?”

“He’s not a god,” the beautiful boy says. “He’s a shinobi, as am I. A civilian like you will only get killed hanging around us.”

He frowns, more insulted than threatened. “I’m not a civilian!”

“You’re not a shinobi. That makes you a civilian.”

Casimir decides ‘shinobi’ is a word for a kind of god, and the beautiful boy only thinks they’re not gods because how they are seems normal here in the afterlife. “I can fight,” he says stubbornly. “I’ve been fighting since I was eight!”

“How old are you now?”

“Almost thirteen.”

The beautiful boy tilts his head. “You’re small for your age.”

“Yeah, well, famine’ll do that to ya.” Whooops, mouthing off to a god. “Sir.” Nailed it.

The beautiful boy’s masklike calm bends a little, just a thinning of his lips that might be annoyance or pity. “My name is Itachi. His is Kisame.”

“I’m Casimir.”

The slightest pinch of a frown between perfect black brows. “Kasu…milu… I’m sorry, I’m butchering it.”

He offers, “You could call me Mirya? It’s what my parents call me.”

“Mirya-kun,” Itachi says, and that’s a lot better, although the r still sounds funny. “I’m sure you’ve been through a lot, and I’m not saying this to be cruel, but Kisame-san doesn’t need a servant, and you can’t come with us.”

He lifts his chin stubbornly. “That’s for him to decide, not you.”

A deep groan rises from the shark god’s bed. A blue-gray, faintly webbed hand emerges from the bedding to pull the pillow over the god’s head. “Itachi-san, if you’re not going to sleep, please take the kid downstairs and feed him. And he’s staying. Samehada likes his chakra.”

Mirya stifled a squeak when the god spoke, and now he says, “Sorry for the noise, boss!”

The hand waves forgiveness. “S’fine, but go away.”

Itachi pinches the bridge of his nose. “Where are his clothes.”

“Still wet. Give’m yours.”

“Mine will be too _big_.” That’s the first actual inflection in Itachi’s voice so far, and it’s probably blasphemous of Mirya to think annoying him into showing emotion is going to be incredibly entertaining. “Fine… fine. But you’re the one who gets to explain him to Leader-sama.”

Itachi moves like grace itself as he rises, takes a scroll from beneath his red-and-black coat, and unrolls it on the floor. A gesture, a faint surge of magic, a little puff of smoke — and a knapsack appears on the scroll. Mirya’s eyes are huge. He has to cover his mouth with his hands to keep from asking questions.

The clothes Itachi gives him are thin black cotton, the sort of thing Mirya would normally consider underclothes, but maybe it’s always hot here in the heavens. It’s closer to the sun, after all. The closure on the pants is weird. Itachi does it up for him without embarrassment, as if dressing a smaller boy is something he’s had practice at. Willowy though Itachi is, Mirya hasn’t been eating enough for the past four years, so it takes a cord belt and some rolling of hems to make them fit. There’s also a little stretchy loop of string with no join, which Mirya marvels at and plays with until Itachi — emitting impatience somehow without the slightest change in his expression or movements — takes it from him and uses it to pull his hair back into a low tail like Itachi is wearing. No shoes are offered, but that’s okay, Mirya’s been going barefoot all summer mostly, on much harsher ground than they have here.

He trots after Itachi down some stairs and into a room with six low tables in it — like a feasting hall maybe, but for people who don’t like each other very much? — that has two of its walls just standing open to the outside. Two elderly women (people get old here? But they don’t have the soul sparklies, so maybe they’re mortals who died old) are sitting near the opening facing the little red bridge that goes to the road. Itachi sits at the other end of the room, where there’s a wooden porch and a garden and a pond. Mirya stays standing. Is he supposed to serve Itachi? There’s only one other door, so that must be the kitchen. Presumably the pink dress lady is around somewhere. He can ask her —

Itachi pokes the back of his knee in a way that makes him involuntarily fold down to kneel on a cushion. “You’re not a servant. You’re not dead, and we’re not gods. Please just behave.”

“I’m behaving!” he says indignantly. “Anyway, I can tell you’re gods, you’ve got soul sparklies. Those old ladies don’t. You’re different.”

A slow blink. “Soul… sparklies.”

He nods encouragingly. “I definitely died. And my dad definitely did the spell to help me find my way to the house of our gods. That was an awful mess, and they kicked me out. I came splooshing out of a pond as warm as a bath, and I was in a huuuuuge forest, with trees as big around as houses! _Big_ houses! There are no trees like that in the living world, Itachi… san?” He trails off, distracted by wondering if he’s speaking a new language now, and if so, why he can’t remember any words of his old one. The whole ‘san’ and ‘kun’ thing is definitely new, and he kinda understands what it means, but the rules for when you use which are vague in his head.

The pink dress lady comes out of the probably-kitchen door then, although she’s wearing orange today, so maybe he shouldn’t call her that. She’s plump, dark, short, gentle-looking. Motherly, yet the opposite of his own mother in all ways. He appreciates that. No point getting homesick. She says sweetly, “Good morning, Shinobi-san. I hope you slept well?”

“Very well, thank you,” Itachi says smoothly. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but could you make a third breakfast?”

“It’s already done, your friend put in the order last night. Would you like to be moved to a larger room now that there are three of you?”

“No, thank you, I think we’ll be moving on today.”

She hesitates like she wants to say something more, glancing at Mirya, but she just pours the tea and goes. Mirya watches Itachi sip tea, wondering when he arrived. Was he traveling overnight? Did he get any sleep at all? Clearly ‘shinobi’ gods need to sleep, or at least like to. Or at least Kisame does. Those probably aren’t ‘behaving’ questions, though. “This is an inn?” he asks instead. “Not Kisame-san’s lodge?”

From Itachi’s slow blink, that should’ve been obvious. “It’s an inn. We’re traveling.”

“Where are we going?”

“Kisame-san and I,” Itachi says pointedly, “are taking missions to earn money for our organization, the Akatsuki. We’re missing-nin. Do you understand? Criminals. Wanted men.”

Mirya scoffs, glancing at the notably unbothered old ladies at the front table. “Nobody seems to mind.”

“Civilians don’t know us. But any shinobi we meet will attack us. You will be killed.”

“Already did that, no big.”

“You _can_ be hurt. You _can_ die.” Itachi’s eyes are intense, the blackest black, and a little thrill of apprehension runs up the back of Mirya’s neck. Just for a moment, those eyes look like the blackness of the waters where he was sent out of the world of the living. His bones remember the cold. He thinks he might have an idea what kind of god Itachi is.

Then, in an instant, the intensity is gone, and the gentle-polite-blank look is back in time for the innkeeper lady to start setting a zillion little dishes on their table. The food is _amazing_. He’s never tasted anything so good. What Kisame gave him last night was nice, but it was just stew. This is edible art. There’s grilled fish, colorful pickles, an omelet that’s surprisingly sweet, dark soup with some cloudy seasoning swirling in it like snow, things involving shellfish and seaweed but vastly more flavorful than the same items as he’s had them at home, steaming mounds of pure white rice, and a number of things he doesn’t recognize but which are delicious anyway. It doesn’t look like very much, portioned out in those tiny dishes, but it adds up, and the innkeeper keeps bringing more rice until Mirya can’t eat another bite. 

He leans back on his hands to really take in his surroundings now that he’s not hungry, tired, or dazed-from-being-killed. He’s not taking Itachi seriously about the whole not-gods-not-dead thing, since he can feel their divine auras, and no mortal is as pretty as Itachi or as… sharky… as Kisame, but he doesn’t see any reason to doubt the rest. Are there criminals in the heavens? Apparently! If there’s money there’s crime, that makes sense. There are inns, and there’s laundry, and clothes don’t fit right, and you get hungry if you don’t eat. Well, it wouldn’t be much of a heaven if there was nothing to do, he supposes. Every pantheon has its tricksters and outsiders and antagonists. Which raises the question…

“Will _you_ be killed?”

Itachi slowly eats a piece of omelet in a querying way.

“If other shinobi attack you. Will they kill you? Will you die?”

“No. We’re strong.”

Mirya nods. “Kisame-san says I can stay.” And that’s that.

Itachi turns to gaze out over the garden as if wishing himself elsewhere. Mirya accepts his victory graciously, and pours them both another cup of tea.


	3. Smells Like Teen Fossil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the anime, this backstory would take 6 episodes

After an hour or so on the road, when they’re far from any observers, Itachi calls out one of his crow summons to send their mission reports. Mirya gawks. “You’re a _crow_ god. That explains so much.”

Itachi leads them out with a long, irritated stride as he launches the bird from his arm. “Kisame-san, please tell Mirya-kun we’re not gods. I can’t seem to convince him.”

“Talking philosophy as we travel; a fine way to pass the time,” Kisame replies. It gets him Itachi’s favorite flat-eyed glare.

Mirya gestures disbelievingly at Kisame with both hands, perhaps indicating his distinctive Hoshigaki features: “Look at him. Of _course_ he’s a god.”

“What is a god, though?” Kisame muses, feeling a little mischevious.

After talking theoretical cosmology long enough that Itachi graduates from glaring to subtly-dramatic weariness, Kisame admits that he’s never considered himself a god. He feels obliged to point out, though, that their abilities are outandish enough that you might have trouble finding a definition of ‘god’ they don’t fit. 

Itachi counters — respectfully but coldly — with the observation that Kisame’s abilities, while considerable, do not extend to sending Mirya’s clan good fishing, or in fact aiding them in any way without physically going there. Which they are not going to do even if Mirya could describe the location to them, which he can’t. Fair, fair, Kisame allows, and apologizes graciously to the boy for having let him think that was on offer; he hadn’t felt, at the time, that long explanations would go over well, since Mirya hadn’t been able to focus his eyes, let alone his mind.

“Then what _can_ you do, Boss?” the boy asks, brow furrowed.

“I’m a swordsman.”

“Will you send them victory when the raiders come? If those assholes would stop stealing our fish and boats and shit, we’d probably recover. I mean, they would.”

“Itachi-san is right, I’m afraid; I can’t send anyone anything. And going there isn’t really possible.” 

“Oh.” There’s a brief chin-crumple before Mirya’s jaw firms. “I have to find someone to save them.”

“There _isn’t_ anyone who can send people good luck or victory or anything like that. Gods or men, we are where we are and we can only affect things here. Whether you died or not, this is the world of the living as far as we’re concerned. Sorry, small fry, I don’t think there’s anything more you can do for your clan.” He pats the kid’s shiny little head consolingly. “Still, traveling with us is safer than going alone, isn’t it?”

“How is it safer?” Itachi puts in. “We’re going to be fighting dangerous people. That’s our job. He’ll be caught in the crossfire.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy, Itachi-san, we’re more than skilled enough to protect him and do our work at the same time. Especially since Samehada prefers his chakra to mine just now, if only for variety, so I’m even stronger than usual.”

Mirya says, “What does that mean? Who’s Samehada?”

Kisame explains about his sword. He’s prepared for Mirya to be frightened or offended, to try to avoid having his chakra eaten, but instead he’s fascinated. He even pats the wrappings gingerly once, though it makes him shake his hand out as if it’s numb. It might be because he doesn’t understand what chakra is, but oh well, it’s not like Samehada’s taking enough to hurt him. Just the excess that spreads out around him.

“Feeding your sword is worth a bit more than sharing your meals and fire, though,” the boy points out in an adorable attempt at shrewdness. “Since you can’t help my clan…”

“Oh? And what is it worth, Mirya-kun?”

“Teach me to use a sword.” Those are Eyes of Determination. Classic adolescent dramatics. “Then I’ll find a way back home and I’ll protect them myself.”

This development, Kisame decides, is not unamusing. “Why not? Impress me enough, and I’ll make you my apprentice.”

“Kisame-san!” Itachi says sharply.

“What’s wrong with that? Leader-sama never said I couldn’t take an apprentice. It’s not as if Mirya has problematic political affiliations. If anyone in Akatsuki has even _heard_ of his clan I’ll eat my uniform.”

“Hn.” Itachi turns to stare intently at the horizon for a long moment, the gears in his genius brain whizzing away, until he comes to the same conclusion in seconds that Kisame did while watching the child sleep last night: there’s absolutely no reason they can’t drag him along if they feel like it. There might be the faintest possibility that this is an elaborate ruse to plant a spy in the Akatsuki, except that Mirya has the wrong calluses and the wrong muscles. He’s not a shinobi. “It’s your decision,” Itachi says resignedly. “We’re in no hurry.”

Mirya does a little skip-hop before settling back into stride, beaming up at Kisame. “I won’t slow you down, Boss. I’m a hunter. I can go all day. I can go for miles and miles.”

“Is that so? And what do you hunt, at home where it’s cold?”

Mirya launches happily into a treatise on the animals he’s killed and eaten, those he’s killed but not eaten, and those that nearly killed him, either to eat him or in self-defense. Whale is in the first category and the last. He promises to show Kisame his skill with a harpoon if they can find one. Kisame admits that he would certainly like to see that.

Rather surprisingly, the boy has plenty of breath to talk even as he matches their strolling pace hour after hour, despite his shorter legs and the way he’s sweating, unused to the heat. Though Kisame has never grudged Itachi his quietness or tried to fill the silence with words, having someone to listen to makes the time pass so much faster. Mirya isn’t the kind of chatterbox who rambles just to hear himself talk. He imparts information in a somewhat organized way. There’s a sort of narrative thread that sounds, at least to Kisame’s ears, more like campfire storytelling than like a shinobi’s report.

He’ll have to improve that if he does take Mirya as his apprentice. Still, the kid’s got a sharp mind and a good foundation in logic, especially considering that his clan’s living conditions sound shockingly primitive. The world’s a big place, Kisame reflects. There’s room for taiga nomads who’ve never seen a zipper.

Reindeer, Mirya explains, are the staple and foundation of the Kivi clan’s diet, their wealth, and their freedom to move about the landscape as it suits them. (Itachi, in a rare moment of levity, pronounces the clan’s name as Kibi, and makes a remark about getting dango at the next stop; Mirya is just confused, but Kisame appreciates it.) They fish in the summertime, grazing their herds on the lowlands, and when narwhal and beluga arrive for the season, the clan takes as many as the sea allows. It’s the job of the shaman, Mirya’s mother, to determine what the sea wants in return. There are bloodletting rituals performed hip-deep in the surf. It all sounds delightfully barbaric. When the weather cools and the nights draw down, they leave the sea behind and take their herds up into the mountains.

“Isn’t it colder there, though?” Kisame wonders.

“Yeah, but not as wet. Cold’s no big. You can bundle up. If the snow’s too deep, though, the reindeer can’t find food.”

“Ah. That makes perfect sense. Go on.”

The upland forests were where Mirya felt most at home. Despite his mother being a sea witch, he was closer to his father, who’s a shaman of the marshy upland forests the Kivi seldom venture into. He married into the coastal clan, adopted their ways, and is proud of his daughter, his eldest, for her talent at sea-witchery. She’ll succeed Mirya’s mother as their shaman if they survive. (Among the Kivi, leadership passes through the female line, because the sea is a woman.) But in the dark season he took his son to the woods and taught him the magic of his birth clan. A much older magic, so old it feels like falling down a hole just thinking about it, according to Mirya. A magic of bogs and caves and mushrooms and bones.

The boy is silent for a little while, then muses, “I should’ve gone to Dad’s gods. The gods of the coast are kind of useless. No offense, Shark Boss,” he adds quickly.

“None taken. The sea doesn’t exist to be useful.”

“Yeah, exactly. It does what it wants, and fuck us if we don’t like it, right? I think the forest gods were sick too, though. All of them except the Elk God, cuz you can’t get sicker than dead.”

“What happened to your clan, Mirya?” Itachi asks softly.

“What _didn’t_ happen to us,” he snorts. “First, raiders came up the coast, killed some guys, took our fish and smashed up our boats, took the kids for slaves. Me and my sister were up shore with Dad when it happened, but Mom was there, and she got hit in the head with an oar, so after that she’d like… get dizzy or drop stuff or whatever, and she’d get headaches… I mean, still an awesome shaman. But she couldn’t go in boats or go out with the deer or anything anymore. 

“We threw together some hide boats for fishing near shore, but we couldn’t go whaling without the big boats, and there wasn’t time left in the season to cut timber and all that, and put away food for the trip upland. We’ve still got our herds though, at that point, and fall’s a good season for berries and all kinds of good stuff in the woods, right? And we had rye and so on waiting to be cut. We’re freaked out about the raiders and stuff, but we’re thinking that’s the worst of it. So we pack up fish camp and head inland… and it starts raining. And raining. And fucking _raining_.” His lip curls at the memory. “ _Everything_ rotted.”

His tale goes on like that, misfortune after misfortune. 

Warm winters, cold summers, disease among the herds. Neighbors in similar straits turning to banditry. The remnants of his father’s clan, whittled down to a gaunt handful after a disastrous late-spring snowstorm caught them on the way through the mountains, seemed healthy when they arrived, but they brought disease with them. Just a flu, Mirya relates with a bewildered sort of anger. The kind of thing you’d fight off with a few days of tea and blankets, usually. But with everyone hungry, it fell on them like wolves. 

Instead of going to sea for the summer, having heard the raiders were back at it along the coast, the Kivi sent wagons and money south to buy food, a thing they hadn’t done before in… maybe ever. It took a whole month, but they came back with everyone they’d sent out, in good health, wagons piled high with flour and rice and dried meats and _three huge cheese wheels_ , as big as a person! Fires were lit to thank the gods, portraits of ancestors were brought out to join the feast… and in the arctic summer night, when the sun just barely dipped below the horizon, the fires of their celebration attracted a ragged band of raiders, who’d run out of people to rob on the coast and wandered inland on the offchance.

There weren’t many of them, and they were weakened, but so were the Kivi. It was a kind of loose siege, with the raiders lurking in the hills, killing and robbing anyone they caught outside the compound. “We knew where they were holed up, but it was too dangerous to go after them, and we had the food we bought. Except since we couldn’t go out to hunt or farm or whatever, that was _all_ we had. It was going to run out. It was go out and fight or starve at home.”

The Kivi outnumbered the foreigners, had more appropriate clothing for the weather, better knowlege of the terrain, and their hunting weapons were in better repair than the raiders’ fighting ones. They were pretty confident they could at least harry the raiders out of their lands, if not kill them all. Home turf advantage, right?

Kisame winces at this, knowing what’s coming. “There wasn’t a warrior among you, was there?”

“Nnnope!” Mirya confirms with false cheer. “I mean, we fought ‘em whenever they came at us at fish camp. I killed my first guy when I was eight, you know? Shot ‘im in the armpit. Did you know there’s an artery there?”

“Yes,” Itachi says.

“And we were _mad_ , too, we figured that’d count for something. Being in the right. I dunno. Being cornered.” He shrugs. “Well, it kinda didn’t. There were six of them left, but they were the meanest, toughest six sons of bitches you ever saw, and it took… ugh.” He kicks a rock viciously down the road, masters his emotion, and goes on. “Seventeen of ours, we lost. Just to kill two of them and drive the rest into some caves. We were talking about blocking the entrances, smoking them out maybe… My sister wasn’t there, cuz we couldn’t risk her, or she might’ve stopped Dad from doing — I dunno what he did, just that it scared the legitimate _hell_ out of me, and I love spooky shit. He went around a corner and all the hair on my body stood up, I honestly couldn’t take another step, half our guys just ran. Nobody went on except Dad, and when he came back and said they were dead we took his word for it. Nobody was gonna go in there and check.” He shivers under the summer sun. “When Dad came back, just for a second, I saw the shadow of antlers on the wall.”

Itachi looks to Kisame. “A jutsu?”

Kisame shrugs. He’s been translating ‘magic’ into ‘jutsu’ all along, for the most part, so he wouldn’t be surprised if Mirya’s father accomplished something lethal with it. “That certainly does sound like killing intent, doesn’t it?”

“I mean, he… intended to kill them? But we all did?”

“What we mean,” Kisame explains, stopping in the road to turn to his potential apprentice, “Is this.” And he lets slip his grip on his chakra, just a little, while bringing to mind the betrayal that set him on this path, the day that made him a comrade-killer for nothing — for _nothing_!

Mirya, to Kisame’s astonishment, doesn’t step back, though he’s white as a cotton hankie under the first bloom of sunburn. “Oh my screaming basket fuck that is the _exact_ feeling Boss please turn it off now thank you.”

With a long exhale, Kisame lets the grudge slip back down into the cold trenches of his memory, and when he breathes in, he breathes the simpler air of now. “Well done standing your ground,” he praises. “Then what happened?”

“Um. Well, that’s about the end of it. Summer was over, we were hungry, ate most of the reindeer when we couldn’t take them out to graze them without getting, you know, shot, and we got about two and a half days of berry picking in before there was a huge ice storm. Then waist deep snow, in goddamn September, then rain and it all melted, and then once every edible item from the beach to the glacier was _completely_ ruined…” He makes a big ironic gesture with both arms, like he’s drawing a rainbow of disappointment in the air. “Perfect autumn weather for a whole month. The fall colors were gorgeous.”

“Wow,” Kisame says, because what else is there to say?

“We were eating bark, Boss. So… I volunteered.” He shrugs. “Somebody had to petition the gods. There’s a procedure, you know? We haven’t done it for like two hundred years but it’s all recorded. It was probably mean of me to ask Dad to be the one to kill me, but I didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.”

Itachi is as close to snarling as he ever gets. “You _volunteered_ to be drowned.”

“The records specify an unmarried youth, and it has to be be someone with magic so they can make the journey. It was me or my sister, and they need her.”

“You honestly believed…” Itachi catches himself, but there’s genuine anger there. 

Mirya puffs up indignantly. “ _Yes_ I fucking believed. I’ve had enough of your, your skeptical — whatever! I’ve seen gods. I’ve met them. Not you guys, _old_ gods, the _oldest_ god. The _first_ one. I met him when I died. He stood there and _watched_.”

“I know the kind of thing old men say when they send boys to die,” Itachi retorts.

Before he can say more than that, Kisame catches his wrist, yanks him to a stop. Itachi tugs at the grip for a moment before he sees what Kisame is seeing: Mirya, stomping along the road in a ginger adolescent snit, drowning in Itachi’s hand-me-downs, barefoot and sunburned, is leaving puddles in his wake, as black as if they’re fathoms deep. The sunlight is weaker. The air is colder. Around his head shadows gather in the shape of an enormous rack of antlers. 

On Kisame’s back, Samehada seems to shrink on itself, sending him a sense of revulsion. _That’s_ not delicious seal-fat chakra. That’s _old bones_. It tastes like fossils, and Samehada does not want any, thank you _very_ much.


	4. Popping Tags At The Murder Mart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The difference between fighting and fishing is that shinobi don't get to eat what they kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you ever want to ask your characters what the hell they're thinking? this may look like i'm foreshadowing future plot, but i assure you i'm not a whole lot clearer on where this uzu nonsense is going than you are. i'm also not super clear on the whole shinobi history timeline thing, and canon geography is real sketchy, so... we're just gonna wing it, eh? ninjas do what they want.

Between curiosity and caution, Kisame doesn’t do anything to break Mirya’s mood, just follows along behind him. He avoids the puddles; they smell like peat and dead things. After only a handful of minutes, the smoky antlers fade away and the puddles lose their depthless darkness, becoming merely tea-colored water and soaking into the dry road like water should. Light and warmth return, as if a cloud has passed from in front of the sun. Only then does Kisame call out.

“Mirya! What was _that_ , boy?”

“What was what?” Mirya grumbles, looking back. He spots the water and stops. “Huh. Did I do that?”

“You certainly did.”

He frowns even harder. “I wasn’t peeing or anything!”

Kisame laughs out loud. Itachi puts his face in his hand.

Mirya squats down to poke at the last disappearing puddle, frown smoothing. By the time Kisame reaches him, he’s cheerful again. This, Kisame senses, is a boy who has no time for grudges or sulks. He’s too fascinated by the world for that. “How’d I do that, Boss? I never left puddles where I walked before. Is it a ghost thing? Is it because I drowned?”

Itachi is the one who answers: “You were unconsciously molding chakra. You clearly have a water nature.”

“What’s that mean?”

Kisame takes his shoulder to steer him along. “I’ll explain while we walk. I had intended to teach you after we finish this round of missions, take some downtime and give you proper lessons the way I learned it, but if even Samehada can’t keep your chakra in check, you’d best learn to control it as soon as possible.” He chuckles. “Just like me. A water-natured chakra tank. I think you’ll be able to master some impressive jutsu, fry.”

“I’m not a fry,” Mirya fake-pouts.

“Oh? You seem like a very small fish to me.”

“Only cuz you’re huge, Shark Boss!” He looks to Itachi. “Back me up here, Crow Boss, we’re not short, he’s just enormigantic.”

“Enormigantic. Thank you for expanding my vocabulary,” Itachi comments blandly. “Now pay attention to your sensei. Not everyone gets the chance to learn from one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist.”

Mirya’s eyes go round even though he can’t possibly know what that means. He clasps his hands behind his back as he walks, face turned up to Kisame like a little sunflower, the picture of attentiveness. Kisame grins, feeling rather fond. “Chakra is the union of physical and spiritual energy,” he begins. “By molding it, you can do many things. Enhance your strength, your speed, your senses. Make your body resistant to harm. Some shinobi can heal, some can read minds, some can change into other forms. And all of us can control the elements.”

“Like the weather?”

“Like the very substance of matter itself. Earth, fire, wind — shinobi each have one or two affinities, elements they’re most in tune with. And ours, as I said, is water.” With a brief gesture — he doesn’t need hand signs for something this simple, hasn’t since he was very young — he calls up a ball of water that swells and swirls until it’s the size of a melon.

“Whoa!”

“I can create my own little ocean with my water release, though not quite so casually.” He dumps the water melon (ha!) on Mirya’s head, making the boy squawk and then laugh. “I’m also skilled with earth.” Hand signs this time; he sinks into the road. Comes up in front of Mirya, expecting another funny noise, but the boy seems to have known where he’d come up. A bit of a sensor, perhaps? Interesting. “There are summons as well, if you can win the trust of a spirit animal clan. You saw one of Itachi’s crows.”

“Do you have sharks?”

“Of course! Only the Hoshigaki clan contracts with sharks. It’s why we look like this. Some clans are very close to their summon animal, and take on its characteristics.”

“Like Itachi’s feather hair.”

Kisame looks Itachi over critically. “You know, I’m not honestly sure.” He adds sternly, “Don’t just say Itachi with no suffix, fry. You should call him sempai. He’s your senior, after all, and a _very_ skilled shinobi. More skilled than I am, I believe.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. He’s legendary.”

“Kisame-san, could you not?” Itachi says with put-on weariness.

Behind his hand, Kisame mock-whispers to Mirya, “And modest!”

It’s been a long time since he made a child laugh. It feels good. Not some cathartic healing change or anything, he’s still bitter and rageful down in his dried and salted heart, but an enjoyable experience. Like sitting in the shade or drinking a nice cup of tea. Keeping Mirya instead of leaving him for the innkeeper to sort out was a rather impulsive decision, but he doesn’t think he’ll regret it, even if the boy gets killed sooner or later. Shinobi are as transient as autumn leaves. The only way to stay sane is to learn to appreciate the moment.

====

Though he hates to say it, because the last thing he needs in his life is a little tag-along, Itachi is beginning to think that finding Mirya was a stroke of luck. He can tell how much stronger Kisame is getting now that his sword isn’t constantly feeding on his chakra. Mirya hardly seems to notice the drain.

The child (and though Itachi was made ANBU captain at that age, Mirya is definitely still a child) delights in doing camp chores, probably to impress Kisame. When they camp on forested land he sets snares for rabbit, and when they stop near water he fishes. His cooking is perfectly edible, if uninspired: chunks of meat browned on a skewer with salt, then cooked in with the rice. (It improves considerably when Kisame introduces him to dried soup mix.) He mends their clothes. He sharpens their weapons. He’s mostly polite, in his untutored bumpkin way, and almost always cheerful. He learns like a sponge. He eagerly practices swings with a stick in the evenings, accepting Kisame’s corrections to his form with no complaints. He picks physical skills up faster than anyone Itachi’s ever seen, all while listening to Kisame’s lectures about chakra control, jutsu, summoning types, and shinobi history, and asking rather clever questions.

On the rare occasions when he gets stubborn, though, nothing can budge him. He categorically refuses to climb trees, for instance. It’s not that he’s afraid of heights; he’ll climb rocks and power poles without hesitation. It’s just trees. He’d considered the idea with his head tilted, then said, “No, I don’t want to do that.” And all further argument or orders just… failed to register.

 _He would have been considered a ‘genius’ in Konoha,_ Itachi thinks. _It’s lucky for him he wasn’t born there._ But Itachi doesn’t allow himself to nurse that bitterness. Misfortune isn’t a competition. Besides, maybe even those plotting old men wouldn’t have been able to break Mirya’s will. Itachi has a momentary vision of Mirya giving Shimura Danzo a casual, “No, I don’t want to do that,” and finds it very satisfying.

At a civilian’s pace, it takes them nearly two weeks to reach the southernmost point of River Country. Before crossing the border into Wind, they stow their Akatsuki coats and scratched hitai-ate to stop overnight in a little coastal town called Hantozen. It’s not quite a military outpost, despite the small fort on the outer arm of the bay, but it’s accustomed to shinobi traffic from Wind, Fire, Tea, and perhaps farther afield. Its most important building for purposes of Akatsuki’s agenda is a bounty office that doubles as an under-the-table mission clearinghouse for unaffiliated shinobi. Its most important building for purposes of living like civilized human beings rather than barn animals is the laundromat.

Mirya falls in love with the laundromat. He wants to watch the clothes whirl around until they’re done. He’s reluctant to let Itachi pull him away for shopping. He can’t keep wearing Itachi’s clothes, though. He tugs uncertainly against Itachi’s grip on his arm until Kisame looks up from doing their accounts and winks at him. Kisame is turning into such a ham.

There’s a street vendor selling clothes made from block-printed cotton, where Mirya chooses two pairs of shin-length pants and two happi coats, one set in indigo-and-white waves and one in moss green with brown leaves, and calls himself done. He has to be scowled into trying on sandals at another stand. He insists that his feet are plenty tough, shoes are for cold weather only, and his toes are ‘grippy’. Itachi pretends not to hear his objections. The pair of zori they finally buy has floral print straps, and is definitely for girls, but Itachi is relieved enough at Mirya accepting any shoes at all that he lets it be. At least the print is a subtle tan and slate blue. After seeing the outlandish clothing the boy arrived in, Itachi was braced to argue against eye-catching colors no shinobi would be caught anything but dead in, but it seems Mirya has some restraint when he’s not turned out like a bride for his father to sacrifice.

(Not that Itachi took Mirya’s life story personally in any way, and Kisame can stop giving him those looks any day now.)

They grab a pack of cheap black t-shirts and two packs of boxer shorts (so Mirya can _quit stealing Itachi’s_ ) at a kiosk that caters to tourists who forgot to pack essentials. They get him a toothbrush, a comb, various toiletries — especially sunblock, so much sunblock, because if Mirya’s nose is already peeling in River, Wind is going to _flay_ him. They get him his own nail enamel, too, because Itachi gets himself some (a sensible matte indigo) and Mirya makes puppy eyes at it. He chooses a dark bronze color with copper glitter in it. He holds it up to the light and oohs at it all the way to the weapon shop.

He doesn’t look at the weapons the way a young shinobi would. That’s what really brings home to Itachi that Mirya is a civilian. It seems he’s still somehow been thinking of the younger boy as a sort of poorly trained genin. Even the most hopeless of Academy kids would be starry-eyed in a shop like this, though. Mirya seems confused and a little intimidated.

“You’ve used weapons before,” Itachi reminds him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know anything about murder weapons,” Mirya stage-whispers. “Get me a shortbow and I’ll get you a goose, but I don’t see anything for hunting here.”

“That’s why Kisame-san is teaching you. We’re mostly here to get practice swords. But if there’s anything else you want, now is the time. We won’t stop for shopping while we’re on-mission.”

“I do need my own knife…” Cautiously, as if the shopkeeper is about to leap out from behind the counter and pelt him with shuriken, Mirya drifts closer to the nearest display case. 

The shopkeeper gives Itachi an indulgent smile. No doubt he’s seen any number of jounen-sensei outfitting their children on training trips and C-rank missions, and imagines this to be similar. Itachi looks older than he is, and Mirya younger. Their lack of hitai-ate is not unheard-of — there are plenty of reasons for a pair of young shinobi to hide their affiliation. While Mirya gets used to being near sharp steel or whatever he’s doing, Itachi sees to his own resupply, including extra of everything so they can teach Mirya whatever they’re teaching him. 

A wordless crow of triumph brings his attention back to Mirya. Itachi raises an eyebrow in query. Mirya holds up what looks like an oversized arrowhead with a ring welded to the tang. “Harpoooooooons.”

“We’re not fishing for tuna,” Itachi points out. But before Mirya can even properly settle into his (offensively otouto-ish) pout, Itachi shakes his head and beckons. “Fine, if that’s what you want.” If Kisame wanted to keep Mirya from spending their weapons budget on fishing gear, he should’ve come along.

Mirya gathers up the shop’s whole stock, five of the odd things, and a few spools of gray paracord. As he dumps them on the counter, he gives the shopkeeper a big freckle-faced smile and says, “Do you have a knife for cutting?”

The shopkeeper and Itachi both look at him blankly.

“These are all stabby knives,” Mirya explains. “I want a slicey knife. With maybe the ziggyzaggy bit?” There are hand gestures.

Itachi is still baffled, but the shopkeeper gets it; he shuffles boxes behind the counter until he locates a single-edged tactical knife with a serrated spine. Mirya makes grabby hands at it. He coos over it. He shows Itachi the sharpened notch that’s for cutting line, the hole that would be great for smoothing and bending sticks for traps, as proud as if he invented it. He is finally acting like a genin in a weapon shop. Itachi catches himself sort of smiling a little. It’s annoying. He checks the price tag and lets his eyes narrow a little, in case the shopkeeper is ready to offer a discount. Unfortunately, Mirya isn’t above just putting the knife on the pile and chirping thanks without waiting for a decision, and Itachi has apparently gone soft. He lets the moment for objecting pass. 

Wooden practice swords can be bought by the dozen, because one tends to break them, and the shopkeeper throws in a couple of harpoon shafts for free since they’re buying so much. The pile is so big Itachi’s not sure it’ll fit in the storage scroll he brought. He holds his breath as he seals it, hoping the seal isn’t about to fail and spray weaponry at the ceiling. It holds, though.

As he pays, Itachi comments, “I’m surprised you carry fishing tools alongside the shinobi weapons.”

The shopkeeper makes a vaguely up-the-coast gesture with his shrug. “Lotta second-generation immigrants from the islands, and now we’re getting another wave from Wave, heh. The line between fishing and fighting is pretty blurry up that way, you know?”

“I don’t,” Itachi encourages. “Refugees from Uzu, you mean? They use harpoons in battle?”

“Mhm, tridents, nets, all that kind of thing. Your genin’s obviously got Uzu blood, you should try him on nets. We got some weighted steel ones coming in, week, week and a half maybe. Crazy what they can do with those things. It’s a talent.”

“Something to think about,” Itachi says as he takes his reciept. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ , Shinobi-san, you have a _great_ day.”

Outside, Mirya turns back toward the laundromat. Itachi catches his shoulder and turns him around. “We’re not done.”

Mirya does one of his little shuffle-in-place moves, as if he has to dance his mental map like a bee. “What do we still need? Food? I thought we were getting that tomorrow when we leave.”

“Armor.”

“Eh? But you and Kisame-sensei aren’t wearing armor.”

“Yes, we are.” He spots the shop he wants and lengthens his stride. Mirya jogs to keep up, but with less bounce than before. The magic of shopping has clearly faded for both of them.

Itachi doesn’t present Mirya with too many choices, since he didn’t even realize their mesh undershirts were armor, and thus can’t know what he needs. He lets Mirya choose color, and tries to let him pick whether he’ll have long sleeves or short, but at the first hint of dithering he picks long sleeves for him. In a matter of minutes he’s paying for a mesh undershirt and leggings in light gray, leather armguards and shinguards in slate blue, fingerless gloves in dark gray, and a blank hitai-ate on a slate blue leather band. Since his scroll is full, he piles it all in Mirya’s arms. There may be a mumble or two about not needing any of this, but he chooses not to hear it. Neither he nor Kisame is any good with healing jutsu. It will be annoying if Mirya gets cut up.

“Now we can go back to the spinny washing place?” Mirya asks hopefully, sounding a bit muffled because he’s steadying the armor pile with his chin.

“Yes.”

“I hope it’s still spinning!” He jogs off, full of energy again. What is so fascinating about a laundromat?

That evening, in their rented room, Kisame shows Mirya how to wear the light armor of a traveling shinobi. He puts it on with his blue waves outfit, and attaches one of his giant arrowheads to its two-meter-long shaft, winding the cord spiralwise down it. He grounds the butt of it on the cheaply carpeted floor, grins up at his sensei, and… well, Konoha as a cultural entity has been too ashamed of how it failed Uzushio to talk about it as long as Itachi has been alive, but he’s seen photographs, he’s seen woodcuts. Maybe he shouldn’t have let Mirya choose his own clothes.

To Kisame, he muses, “He certainly has an Uzu-esque air about him. According to the weapon shop proprietor, it’s ‘obvious’. Perhaps you ought to teach him sealing.”

“Who’s what now?” Mirya says.

Kisame tilts his head. “Tell me, Mirya-kun, did a group of people with strong… magic… arrive about thirty years ago, to join your clan or your father’s?”

Mirya shrugs. “Iunno. Before my time, Boss. Why?”

“Do you get your red hair from your mother or —“

“Dad. My mom and sister are blonde. There’s plenty of redheads on Mom’s side too, though. What’s this about?”

Itachi says dryly, “It’s been your theory all along, Kisame-san, don’t look at me.”

“Your village was their ally; mine wiped them out. I think your information may be more accurate, Itachi-san.”

Mirya bounces impatiently in his girly zori with his lethally gleaming harpoon, mouth flattened with an effort not to interrupt. Itachi almost refuses; he’s already talked too much today, his throat is dry. Mirya is Kisame’s problem. But an enclave of red-haired chakra tanks on the northern coast of Snow is a strategically interesting possibility. It would be wise to pursue it at least so far as doesn’t impact his primary goal or his cover.

“Very well. Let me find my map.”


	5. The Hidden Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Underneath the underneath is where you find venomous things squirming in the dark

The map is a real kick in the teeth. 

Mirya knows maps. He knows the Irutni coastline maps he’s got tattooed on his wrists, he knows the knotted string maps and carved tortoiseshell island maps and embroidered wave-direction charts used by other northern people. He knows the picture maps that come from inland, from the south, from near and far. He’s seen good ones and bad ones, accurate ones and fanciful ones, decorative ones and functional ones. He’s spent more time than he likes with the pinned and scribbled-on nautical chart his mom hangs up in fish camp for pointing at while yelling. On the map Itachi unrolls across the inn bed, there is not a single land feature he recognizes.

It’s one thing to believe, based on his experience of dying, meeting gods, and awakening in a place that feels so different, that this is a plane in the heavens, albeit not the one where his people’s gods abide. It’s a whole nother thing to look at a super detailed map of the place your new bosses have been telling you you come from, and know for a fact they’re wrong. 

It’s a jolt. He’d kinda started slightly believing them. This stuff about red-haired seal experts fleeing a war and fetching up on a northern coast, interbreeding with the nomadic people there, it’s plausible. Nothing he ever heard mentioned when he was alive, but it’s plausible. Especially since he apparently looks just like them.

But that coast is all wrong. That _continent_ is all wrong. The names of the countries and the cities are wrong, the placement of the mountains and rivers. Where they say he must come from, the ‘Land of Snow’, is an island. Somehow that’s better proof than suddenly speaking a new language, or having ‘chakra’ blasting off his soul in a big cloud, when he’s always known magic as something deep and evasive and hungry that you have to chase after with drugs and drums. And if he accepts that having died in his world makes him alive in this one, if he accepts that the soul sparklies of shinobi divinity are something he can also learn to use, to gain strength from, if he accepts that their godhood is something he can aspire to… well, that opens up a real weird new horizon to sail for. He doesn’t know how to feel about it, but he never did flinch from weirdness.

“Mirya,” Itachi scolds, “are you listening?”

“Little distracted, Crow Boss, sorry. This… you say this is where you think I come from? Because it’s not.”

“Oh?” That expression of polite interest is covering some genuine tension. Huh. Why does Itachi have an opinion? It’s just trivia and fun-facts as far as Akatsuki are concerned, or so Mirya thought.

“If I’m related to these Uzu folks, the travel went the other way. Maybe they’re Irutni who came here when they died.” With more of Itachi’s attention on him than he expected this to get, he borrows Kisame’s pencil and account book, and doodles an approximate map of the northern Czinsistan coast. It’s a way bigger scale than his wrist maps, so he wouldn’t want to have to navigate by it, but at least he knows he’s got the fjords pointing in the right direction. “Irut, Kamak, Biroiyat… and Tamiyr here is technically Czini too but nobody’s been able to keep them in line for like — I guess ever? — so that’s where most of our raiders come from —“ He glances up to find them both staring at his face rather than his map. “What.”

Itachi looks at Kisame. Kisame shrugs.

With a sigh, Mirya gives the book and pencil back. “I’ve been _telling_ you.”

Kisame says lightly, “No one’s ever really explored the limits of time-space jutsu.”

“I suppose we weren’t going to do anything about his clan anyway, so it’s not as if this changes anything,” Itachi says, but it kinda sounds like he was hoping otherwise. Aww, he cares!

Mirya sits down to start taking off the armor bits they gave him. It’s gorgeous stuff, and very comfortable, but there’s no point wearing it when they’re not on the road. “Since everybody seems to think I’m one of these Uzu folks, I’m still interested to hear about them.”

He does his best to listen to Itachi’s history and not get distracted theorizing. It is pretty interesting, after all. Those island people, especially the Uzumaki clan, were so good at using seals and sigils that their enemies razed their city to the ground and slaughtered everyone in it. Kisame comes from one of those enemy countries, though he was a tiny child when it happened. Itachi comes from Konoha, Uzushio’s closest ally, and says that the spiral of Uzushio was added to Konoha’s uniforms in memory. No one knows for sure why Konoha didn’t help Uzushio. The official story is that the invasion happened too fast, that mere travel time was the culprit, that Konoha came right away but by the time they arrived it was too late. Maybe a messenger hawk (they have messenger _hawks_? Because that is _cool_ ) was shot down, or perhaps weather delayed the ships.

“You don’t believe that,” Mirya notices.

There’s a tightening around Itachi’s eyes, a flicker of the thick lashes, that Mirya has come to realize is his version of a wince. “Those who were in power then are still in power now, and I know how they operate. I would not be at all surprised if the Council of Elders, and Shimura Danzo in particular, deliberately blocked the rescue because they were afraid of their own ally.”

“I’m surprised, Itachi-san,” Kisame says mildly. “You usually prefer not to talk about Konoha at all.”

“And do you blame me?” Itachi snaps, then turns his glare to Mirya. “You may as well hear it from me before you hear it elsewhere: I slaughtered my own clan. I killed my parents. My cousins. I painted the Uchiha compound red. That’s what I’m known for.”

That’s so out-of-nowhere that Mirya can’t even form an opinion, just blinks at him. “Why?”

“To test my abilities.”

“But _really_ why?”

“Are you calling me a liar, Mirya?” His eyes are a black warning.

“I’ve _met_ you, sempai.” Mirya crosses his arms, refusing to be cowed. “That’s not an Itachi reason. Plus killing your own parents would be zero effort, they wouldn’t defend themselves, so it wouldn’t test shit. Something to do with those Elders you hate, I bet.”

Kisame’s skinny eyebrows are halfway up his forehead. “You need to stop speculating, fry.”

“But Boss!”

“No, Mirya.”

“He could at least come up with a more plausible lie!”

“Leave it alone. All of us have things we’d rather not discuss.”

“But —“

Kisame reaches out and clamps his shoulder, big hand gentle but heavy. “The transparency of the lie is a way of saying, ‘I don’t expect you to believe this, but I do expect you not to inquire further.’ Do you understand?”

Mirya opens his mouth, closes it, hums. “Oh.” He looks at Itachi under his lashes, face heating as he begins to realize what a delicate line he just stomped over like a big idiot. “Sorry. I was being an asshole. I won’t do it again.”

Itachi keeps staring at him, but little by little the cold fades from his eyes, until at last he lets his shoulders relax. “If — look — hn.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was ANBU. ANBU take clan elimination missions sometimes. If Konoha had ordered a young ANBU captain to slaughter his own clan as if in madness, so that the leadership’s hands would look clean, what do you suppose that shinobi would feel toward his village afterwards?”

“Fury,” Mirya replies instantly. “The kind of fury that leaves scorched and salted earth where nothing will ever grow again.”

Itachi actually looks surprised to be understood, the dumbass. “Strange. I thought you forgave your clan for sacrificing you.”

“Huh? Oh, I do. Know what I don’t forgive? The Czini government letting the whole north coast get fucked over a barrel and then demanding taxes anyway. I was kind of thinking of doing something about that when I grow up, but eh.” He shrugs. “Dead now, so nevermind.” He finally remembers he was taking off his armor, and tosses the last shinguard aside, then scoots over to sit closer to Itachi. “This Shimura Danzo guy, you gonna take him down?”

“Eventually. Akatsuki has long term plans. Every shinobi village is riddled with corruption. We’ll… correct that when the time comes.”

“Sweet,” Mirya approves. He bumps Itachi’s shoulder with his own, ignoring the way it tenses him back up. “I know I’m weak compared to you guys now, but I won’t always be, and I’m in.”

Kisame spares Itachi from having to answer by ruffling Mirya’s hair and tilting his head toward the door. “Sounds like our cue to go train, fry. Grab one of those new bokken. Time to start putting on some muscle.”

Kisame talks about strength exercises all the way to the shore, which Mirya understands is a way of warning him not to bring up Itachi’s past in public. As if he would! Once they’re down on the shingle beach, though, the wind and surf and crunch of gravel cover their voices, and they face the ocean so no one can read their lips.

“You’ll hear this sooner or later,” Kisame says; “Itachi left one survivor. His younger brother. He’ll say it’s because he wants to challenge him when he’s stronger. He’ll pretend to hate him. You _must_ behave as if you believe that. Even among friends, he can’t show any sign that he’s anything to his brother but a mortal enemy. Promise it.”

“Yikes. Okay.” Mirya thinks about this for a while. Kisame reaches over and adjusts the angle of his wrist. He swings again, gets a nod, and keeps thinking. Fitting together their history lessons, the map, the tendons in Itachi’s neck that stood out as if talking about those Elders hurt like getting stabbed.

_And there’s also… If Leila killed everyone but me, and said it was just to see if she could, and that she hates me now and she’s going to kill me later, I mean it would hurt like fuck but once I got past the shock I’d look for, for… obviously what made her do it, but also… why she was able to spare me from it when she couldn’t spare Mom and Dad. I wonder if Itachi’s brother gets that too. Probably not, though. Everybody says it’s weird how I shrug shit off. Poor Mini-Itachi is probably out of his bitty mind now._

This is no mere spirit realm, not a structure of symbols and patterns and echoes like the home of the coastal gods was. This is a whole fresh world-of-the-living, and it might be even more real than his own. And some of those who live and die here like mortals make his people’s gods look like fading ghosts. There’s such potential in that. It could be so fine! But human nature is what it is. Instead of castles in the sky, what they have here is endless, endless war. It’s a heaven of warriors, but not that romp of feasting and fucking and consequence-free slaughter some myths talk about. These warrior gods call themselves shinobi, the hidden ones. They fight as proxies for others, they fight dirty, they fight all their lives, and Kisame at thirty-something is older than most of them ever live to be.

But then there are these Elders. It doesn’t sound like Mirya is going to be able to ask for details, but if they were already adults and in positions of power when Uzushio got stomped, they’ve got to be, what, in their fifties at least? Probably older? Which suggests that once they attained power, they removed themselves from the battlefield. They’re safe at home, and moving war gods like pawns. Yet their magic has probably only grown in magnitude and skill. They can enforce obedience. Especially if they club together… and keep the younger warriors weak, maybe by killing off clans that produce ‘legends’ like Itachi.

Mirya hasn’t seen Itachi fight, but he’s picked up enough hints to know that this boy only a year older than himself could _walk through armies_ back home. And somehow this guy Danzo and his wrinkly buddies made him kill his entire family… except for one. Except for one that he has to pretend to hate.

The tip of Mirya’s wooden sword touches the stones. Rather than prod him to keep practicing, Kisame waits, curious, as if he wants to see how much Mirya can puzzle out alone… not a test, exactly, but it feels like this is at least as important as being able to copy sword forms, in terms of getting Mirya that apprenticeship. The world of the shinobi is full of underhanded dealings, it seems. Someone fit to follow Kisame would have to be able to think between the lines.

“Leverage,” Mirya concludes. “I’m sure there was more going on than that, if he didn’t warn his clan or take his brother and run. But somehow, Little Bro is a hostage to keep Itachi playing the villain. So… so if a hint gets out… Konoha’s pretty invested in looking like the good guys, huh?” That came up in his history lessons a couple times. “If their fuckery comes out, Little Bro is no good as a hostage, and he becomes an object lesson. Gods, Itachi must hate Konoha _so much_.”

Kisame smiles. He puts his hand on Mirya’s head approvingly. “Our life is an ugly one, Mirya-kun. You don’t have to follow us. You don’t have to become a shinobi. What you’ve learned today, I trust you to keep quiet about, because you’re a good kid and I think you’re starting to see Itachi as a friend.”

“Well, yeah. Is that weird? He’s fucked up but I like him.”

“But you need to understand that if you stay with us, you won’t be able to make any real bonds outside the Akatsuki. After this, you’ll learn more and more things that are dangerous to know. Think about it tonight. When we leave in the morning, if you want to stay behind, I’ll allow it. I’m sure you’d have no trouble finding work. You can keep the things we bought you.”

“Boss…”

“Don’t look so glum!” the swordsman laughs, releasing his head with a gentle shove. “It’s a choice you have, that’s all. For now, get your point up, that’s a terrible habit.”

Mirya moves back into position and resumes practice, chewing his lip anxiously. So this town is his last chance to decide, is it? If he keeps on with Kisame and Itachi, he’ll be one of them, and tarred with the same brush, even though he doesn’t really understand what makes them criminals and other shinobi not. He does understand why he has to choose, and why now, but it’s still kind of scary and hurtful, a little bit. He’s gotten attached. He doesn’t _want_ to leave his new friends, and he certainly has no interest in becoming some random fisherman in some random tropical town.

“Boss?” he says eventually. “He said Akatsuki would fix the corruption. Is that for real? I told him I’m in, and if it’s real I meant it, but I’m aware I kind of don’t know jack shit.”

“It’s real, but it’s a long and bloody road. And we’ll be seen as the bad guys even if we succeed. We may not be able to participate in the better world we make, because of what we had to do to make it.”

“Just tell me the cure’s not worse than the disease. I mean, you’re not going to, I dunno, open the mouth of Hell or anything, right?”

“I’m not altogether sure what that means,” Kisame says jovially. “You know I won’t elaborate on our plans before you make your decision, but what I can tell you is, the kind of thing that happened to Itachi, something similar happened to most of us. It happened to you too, so even though you can’t fight the injustice in your homeland anymore, you can understand why we’re fighting here.” He taps Mirya’s sword admonishingly. “Point _up_ , fry!”

“Why are my arms getting tired already,” Mirya whines rhetorically. “This shouldn’t be harder than rowing or cutting wood or —“

“Different stress on the muscles. You’ll be sore tomorrow!”

“Yeah, I can tell! Hey… Boss?”

“Yes, Mirya-kun?”

“I trust you. If you say you’re doing the right thing, then you are.”

Kisame sighs. “Thank you, but I told you to think it over and you will. I won’t accept an answer until morning.”

“Okay, Boss.” He knows what he’ll decide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you're not going to, like, turn the moon into a giant eyeball or anything, right? course not. you're obviously sensible people.


	6. Criminals Schmiminals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When your whole economy is murder-based, any moral high ground is a little shaky

While Mirya showers, Kisame tells Itachi about the choice he offered. “I told him to think it over tonight. Sleep on it. Tell us in the morning. If he decides the missing-nin life isn’t for him, I won’t kill him.”

“Rude, Kisame-san,” Itachi murmurs, because that means it’s up to him to fix the information leak with genjutsu.

“Don’t worry, he’ll stay. However he got here, he knows he can’t go home, and we’ve been kind to him.”

“Perhaps.” He glances at the one bed. There was no need to pay for two, with one of the sleepers so small. “Do you want the first watch?”

“It’s all the same to me,” Kisame says cheerfully, and goes out the window.

Itachi undresses as much as he feels comfortable doing and lies down. He wishes he could reasonably ask for an extra day here to catch up on his sleep. He’s been feeling a little under the weather. The dry air of Wind Country will probably help, though. He tries to fall asleep before Mirya comes in — the boy has fallen in love with hot running water, and takes the longest showers he can get away with — because it’s hard to relax with someone else in the bed, but it’s no good. He can’t even doze. Too much to think about.

Recruiting a lost child into the Akatsuki with kindness and sword lessons is very far from the worst thing he’s condoned. The truth is, he’d have a hard time articulating what the difference is between that and what hidden villages do with their own children. True, Mirya will have a hard and dangerous life, but hasn’t he already?

It’s just that if he accepts such a life for this near-stranger, he has to face the possibility that the only reason he didn’t take Sasuke with him, the only reason he _deliberately cracked his little brother’s mind_ to set him on the path of the avenger, was to restore the Uchiha name. And what’s that worth? When he looks back on their history, what is that name honestly worth? Madara tarnished it long ago, and the corrosion never stopped spreading. Maybe he should’ve taken Sasuke and changed their names. Maybe instead of spurring his brother to develop his Mangekyo as fast as possible, Itachi should’ve tried to keep him from obtaining Sharingan at all.

Dangerous thoughts. Fall too far down that hole and he’ll find himself as insane in truth as he’s let the world think he is. No, taking an eight-year-old Sasuke to the terrorists he’s spying on would’ve been a truly awful idea. Aside from that, Sasuke will be targeted whether he manifests those coveted tomoe or not. His only chance of survival is to grow even stronger than Itachi. And gods, he’s such a righteous little thing. So fierce when he thinks something is wrong. So proud to be part of the Uchiha, the Justice of the Leaf. He would never have been happy living as a criminal.

Mirya is very different from Sasuke. Different in every way but his intelligence, really. He said he could forgive his clan, but not his government; it sounds as if his idea of justice is based on reciprocation, not law. When he finds out that Akatsuki’s plan to save the world is to take it over by force, he probably won’t blink. He might think it sounds like a perfectly reasonable course of action. Maybe he’ll thrive. 

And he is _not Itachi’s responsibility anyway_ , and Itachi needs to _sleep_ , before this vague malaise turns into bronchitis again — but he’s brooded too long. The shower turns off and Mirya’s intolerably loud bedtime routine has commenced. There’s singing. Drawers bang open and shut.

“You know,” Itachi says in a conversational way, “shinobi are supposed to be silent.”

Mirya pokes his head out of the bathroom, mouth frothy, and gestures with a toothbrush: “Oo fay fumfin?”

“My head hurts, Mirya-kun.”

Mirya vanishes without replying, but he’s at least a little quieter. Some minutes later the bed sinks under his weight, and he taps Itachi’s shoulder. “Sit up.”

“No,” Itachi says without opening his eyes.

“Trust me. Sempai, sit up a second.”

It would be uncouth to groan. Shoving Mirya onto the floor would be an unforgivable loss of control. Itachi takes a long breath through his nose to steady himself and complies, eyes still closed. There’s a tug at his ponytail, Mirya sliding the binder off, and then a comb skimming gently over his scalp.

It does help the headache, a little.

“You wanna sleep with it loose, or should I braid it?” Mirya says eventually. “Leila has me braid hers sometimes, I’m okay at it. But I never bother with mine. Nope,” he adds as Itachi reaches for the binder that’s ended up around Mirya’s wrist. “ _That_ is why it’s all hanging in your face all the time. It’s breaking off at the stretchy whatsit as you sleep. And it’s gonna pull and make your head worse, too. Braid or no? … All right, braid it is.”

“You’re bossy,” Itachi murmurs when Mirya puts the binder on the end of the loose braid.

“And you’re half asleep,” Mirya retorts, sounding amused. “Is that Shark Boss on the roof?”

A moment’s concentration as he lies down; “Yes.”

“I can’t feel very far away yet but he said I can increase my range if I practice.” The covers pull and rustle and slide as Mirya splits the duvet from the sheet, takes the sheet for himself, settles the duvet back over Itachi. Jouncing of mattress, crunch of starchy hotel pillow, a yawn. “S’nice. Knowing you guys are there.”

Kisame is right. Mirya won’t leave them. Being alone is worse than being a criminal. “Good night, Mirya.”

“Night, Tachi.”

* * *

Jiraya bids the ladies a raucous goodnight, blowing kisses, and lets himself sway perilously as he ascends to his room. It’s not exactly an act, he just doesn’t bother with the effort of not being drunk. Sex workers might be priceless assets for intelligence gathering, but they’re still civilians, and he’s aware how threatening he’d seem if he were sober and serious. Besides, it’d be a damn shame to pay for all that booze and not enjoy it!

Once he’s alone, though, he circulates his chakra to flush the alcohol through. A few privacy tags, door wall window, a jar of toad treats produced from a storage scroll, the plastic tub from the bathroom filled with cool-but-not-cold water. Ready.

Gamabunko is the smallest of his summons, but that doesn’t mean she’s the weakest. She’s a Bony Headed Toad, a drab little thing but tough, nearly impossible to spot when she doesn’t want to be seen. She has one job, and one job only: stealth messenger. He never summons her for any other purpose. She never appears without being summoned. Her knowlege of codes and ciphers, and her attention to operational security, are rivalled by none. She’s even mastered the art of appearing silently and without the puff of fog that every other summoning emits. Her skill’s the only reason this relay game he’s playing with Uchiha Itachi doesn’t devolve into a mess of useless gossip.

“Asset is still with mark codename Hammer, last reported from River en route to Hantozen. Reporting crow was Crystal.” Her voice is soft, a little raspy, not the brash croak most of the toads have.

“Good, Crystal’s not as full of beans as most of ‘em.” Jiraya gestures invitingly to the tub of water. When Bunko hops in, she doesn’t even make a splash.

“Asset’s health and sanity are stable, cover intact,” she goes on, still crisp even though her bronze eyes are half closed in pleasure at the wetness on her skin. Bony Headed Toads like to be moist, and unlike his less stealthy summons, Bunko won’t use jutsu to hydrate while she’s working. Too much chance of someone spotting the chakra emission. “He split from Hammer for… ‘a few’ days, during which he completed a misinformation mission for a merchant cabal in Grass. Crystal did not report on Hammer’s mission, but it was in Fire. When Asset reached their rendezvous on the River border, Hammer had acquired a child.”

Jiraya side-eyes the toad. “A child.”

Bunko blows a few bubbles, because she’s too dignified to say _You heard me, Pops_ , even though he deserves it. “Late juvenile or early adolescent, height… ‘comes up to our guy’s chin’…” Her report continues, with further pointed pauses at the vagueness of the crow’s information. It’s not that crows aren’t good at observation. It’s just that they’re constitutionally unable to tell all they know. It makes them itch or something.

Not for the first time, Jiraya wishes he could meet with the crows directly and pester them into relaying exactly what Itachi dumped into their little featherbrained heads with his Sharingan. But crow summoners are too rare; there’s only so many times he can claim to be getting a message from Aoba. Especially if someone starts paying attention to Aoba. Jiraya has absolutely not in any way ruled out the possibility of Konoha having information leaks much too close to the top. That’s as far as he’s willing to say without proof: he hasn’t ruled it out. But he doesn’t have to know for sure Konoha’s leaky to take every precaution as if it is. Thus this four point system of contact where who knows how much relevant intel is getting lost.

Case in point, this boy Hoshigaki Kisame picked up while Itachi wasn’t looking. The crow doesn’t seem to have understood human interactions well enough to explain it. Since Itachi doesn’t give his reports in words — can’t, for fear of being overheard — he passes on his own memories, probably edited or curated in some way, as a genjutsu. Then the bird has to explain those memories in words to Bunko, who (bless her uptight little soul) can’t resist condensing it all further into spy-speak.

And now Jiraya has to figure out how much of that to pass on to Hiruzen-sensei, knowing somebody in that tower might be reading over his shoulder. It’s not even clear whether the kid is a new recruit or just a charity case. All Jiraya can glean is that he’s there voluntarily and has crappy chakra control.

“Due to his appearance and chakra signature, Hammer suspects the child may be Uzumaki,” Bunko finishes, as mildly as if she doesn’t know exactly how big a bomb that is. “Our asset tentatively concurs.”

“Well, shit,” Jiraya sighs. He can’t not pass that on. “Now Akatsuki’s got _two_ possible-Uzumaki. What are the chances this is a coincidence?”

“Twice is enemy action,” Bunko says flatly.

Jiraya sighs again. He unscrews the lid of the jar. “Have a waxworm.”

* * *

Mirya fell asleep with Itachi, but wakes up with Kisame. He doesn’t remember when they switched. The new difficulty level of his sword practice went to must’ve really worn him out. Those practice swords aren’t heavy, but they’re heavier than a stick, and the way Kisame had him moving worked muscles in his shoulders and forearms that oars and axes never did. He is, as predicted, hella sore.

Slipping out of the bed, he does his best not to wake Kisame. Neither of his bosses are getting enough sleep. It’ll be good when he’s able to start taking his share of the watches.

Which reminds him, this is his Big Decision Morning. Hah. Like there was any doubt. He stretches out as much of the soreness as he can, then gets dressed in his new gear, ready to leave as soon as they are. No way are they ditching him for his own good. Criminals schmiminals, they’re some of the more decent people he’s met, and he’s counting his own clan. Land love ‘em but a lot of the Kivi are huge assholes. He knows he’s a bit of a jackass himself. Doesn’t bother him. But Kisame makes him want to be a good student, and Itachi makes him want to be a good friend. He’ll be a better person with them than without, even if it means his future career involves doing murders.

Plus, who the hell would give up the chance to become a god of battle? What would he do with all this chakra if he didn’t have Kisame to teach him to use it, and Samehada to gobble up the excess so he’s not a walking flare?

While he waits for the day to get underway, he dutifully reads the scroll on chakra control Kisame assigned him. He’s always liked reading, and never had enough reading material to keep his brain busy. Books are too bulky for the reindeer herding life. The permanent compound the clan winters at has a ‘library’ in the central hall, but it’s just three shelves tucked away in a side room, and most of the contents are administrative records. More than once, he got bored enough to actually read all those records. He even caught some math errors when he reached such depths of desperation that he recalculated all the trading accounts just to pass the time. Something new was a rare joy. Here, though, objects can be sealed in transport scrolls, weightless and stopped in time. Both his companions have dozens of books and scrolls on their persons at any given moment. There are bookstores, or at least book sections in the stationery-and-household-debris stores, in every village big enough to have more than one street. Instead of going slow to savor the entertainment, Mirya is now reading as fast as he can without loss of comprehension, so that they can swap the current batch out for new ones before leaving town.

The language of the shinobi world is much more compact than the one at home. They have an alphabet like he’s used to — two of them, in fact, sort of like the difference between formal runes and handwriting — but they’ve also got a vast set of symbols so complicated that he guesses it would take him years to learn them all if he had to learn them like a regular person. Apparently being a literate ghost gets you the set for free, though. So convenient.

He’s finished reading the scroll and is re-skimming to settle the information in context when he hears a floorboard creak. He ‘looks’ with his chakra sense. Itachi. Mirya hops up to open the door without wondering why he thinks Itachi will have his hands full. Itachi murmurs thanks as he comes in with a paper tray of paper cups and a greasy paper bag. Ah, he must’ve smelled it. 

“Breakfast,” Mirya whispers adoringly. “Come to Uncle Casimir, my lovelies.” Opening the bag makes the smell even more delicious, cinnamon and fried dough and that musty sweetness he’s learned to recognize as red bean paste. That’d be the one with plain sugar on. Itachi’s favorite, so he leaves it alone. Kisame isn’t picky, so Mirya has his choice of the other two: apple fritter or something with chocolate icing. “I can’t deciiiiide…”

“You always want chocolate when there’s any on offer,” Itachi points out.

That’s true, because it’s the second most delicious of the new foods he’s met here, after coffee. “But apple fritter is my all time favorite. I didn’t know it existed here!”

“Then have the apple fritter.” Itachi clearly thinks he’s an idiot.

He takes the apple fritter. Itachi trades him a cup for the bag. The coffee is too hot to drink yet, so he just inhales the wonderful steam. It’s already got cream and sugar. You have to put cream and sugar to make it taste like it smells. Otherwise it just tastes like burnt toast.

They were being very quiet, so it’s got to be the smell that wakes Kisame. Itachi hands over the last pastry and cup. That’ll be black tea with honey, and Itachi’s cup is probably plain green tea, though he gets milk matcha sometimes too. Gods, everything here tastes so good. If he ever gets home, Mirya is going to cry frustrated tears over every bowl of stew seasoned with nothing but salt and pan drippings.

(The concept of If He Ever Gets Home has become, day by day, a mere sigil of a thought, into which he does not dig. That would lead to grief and yearning, which are neither fun nor productive.)

Once they’ve all finished their caffeinated elixir of choice and washed the sticky off their hands, Kisame cocks an eyebrow at the harpoon leaning against Mirya’s chair. “You seem eager to be underway.”

“I slept real good, but I’m kinda stiff. I wanna hit the road. Work the kinks out. Do we know where we’re going yet?”

Kisame and Itachi share a glance. Mirya can’t one hundred percent read it, but there’s at least one told-you-so bouncing back and forth in there. Kisame suddenly smiles a broad smile, showing his pointy little fish teeth like the happiest sea monster. Cute! “Itachi-san, will you be so kind as to choose our mission? I’d like to visit a bookstore, since Mirya-kun is getting through the basics faster than I expected.”

“If you wish. Do you have any particular requests, other than that it be in Wind?”

“Bandits, I think, if there are any on offer. I believe it’s time for Mirya to draw some blood.”

Mirya grins almost as wide as Kisame. Fighting for his family’s life while hungry and scared was decidedly crap, but fighting toward punishing corruption with these combat monsters beside him? Hell. Fucking. Yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: when mirya says 'boss' the word he's using is 'oyabun', the leader of a criminal gang, which literally translates to foster father apparently? i did not know that when i started having him say it. happy accidents. which would you rather have, an ero-sennin or a same-oyabun? don't say you'd rather have itachi, he's emotionally unavailable.


	7. Hyouton: Margarita Release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You'd be amazed what kids can do if you don't tell them it's supposed to be hard

Kisame re-rolls the mission scroll and hands it back with a thoughtful hum. “This seems like it might be a little bit political, don’t you think, Itachi-san?”

“Yes,” Itachi says simply as he tucks it away.

They walk in thoughtful quiet, considering the possibilities. Or perhaps Itachi has already considered them all and is just enjoying the sunshine and the breeze off the sea. The coast of Wind is less dry than inland, chaparral hills and little olive-farming villages strung like beads along a dusty road. They’ll travel within sight of the ocean for a few days before they turn in amongst the hills toward their destination. It’ll be hotter and drier then. Kisame’s skin isn’t looking forward to it.

Ahead of them, Mirya is singing to himself as he walks. It’s nonsense, or a different language, but it sounds cheerful. His voice is good despite being in the midst of changing. He’s apparently able to crack it on purpose. He jumps back and forth across octaves with gleeful abandon, somehow always landing on key. At the same time, he’s also doing his chakra exercises. He’s reached the point of being able to mold chakra on purpose a little bit, so Kisame set him to creating and controlling water in his hand. Itachi told him the Konoha equivalent is sticking leaves to yourself, which sounds as if it would be silly-looking. Kisame would have Mirya doing that just for the amusement value, but at this stage he feels controlling one’s element is more urgent than navigating one’s environment. Mirya climbs well enough without chakra-sticking, but no amount of dexterity will summon water in the desert.

The fry is far enough down the road that Kisame can’t see how well he’s doing, but there’s the occasional glint of water on his hand, and sometimes a splash on the road, so he’s definitely succeeding at least a little bit.

When he asked for bandits, Kisame expected Itachi to take a C-rank, the sort of thing where some township has a little highway robbery problem and can’t afford to hire Suna nin. He should’ve known Itachi would get ambitious. The mission he chose is going to be on the complicated side of A-rank, and the town’s reason for hiring under the table seems a bit dodgy. Perhaps not so much that they can’t afford Suna nin as that they don’t trust them. The supposed bandits sound more like an army encampment. They’re well dug-in, too, and even if the mission brief is honest, there’s at least a hundred combatants, several of whom are able to mold chakra, though whether they’ve had significant shinobi training is unclear. Genin dropouts, perhaps. Unlike Kiri, Suna leaves its failures alive to find other work.

“We won’t just be able to wind him up and let him go,” Kisame says regretfully. “He’s not ready for that at all.”

Itachi makes an agreeing noise. “Did you think we would?”

“Against a handful of civilians? Sure.”

“My apologies. I didn’t think it through.”

“That’s why I like you, Itachi-san. Your lies are so perfunctory, it’s as if you never lie at all.”

Shaking his head, Itachi gives a tiny wry smile. “Very well. I was curious. I feel that whatever is going on here may be of interest to Leader-san. Of course, if it does turn out to be nothing but civilian banditry, you’ll have your opportunity for tsujigiri.”

Kisame laughs heartily at that apt comparison. Mirya _is_ a little like a new sword, unblooded, which Kisame longs to test against living flesh. And because he’s so fresh from the forge, he’ll have to be tested against someone defenseless. Well, defenseless by shinobi standards. No doubt these bandits think themselves very hard men. Their faces when they’re cut down by a freckle-faced child will be a riot.

“What’s the plan, then?” he asks after a little while. “We need more information, I know, but I’m sure you have a loose outline.”

“Yes. A few.”

 _A few._ He probably has a dozen nested contingencies already. Geniuses! What does go on in their busy little heads? “Perhaps we can use Mirya to scout the town that sent the request. He still looks harmless.”

Itachi inclines his head in tentative acceptance. Usually he’s the one who listens in bars and so on. Between his delicate features and his genjutsu skills, he can pass unnoticed or catch gossips’ attention as a beautiful woman. But if a fight isn’t expected in the town, it could be a chance for Mirya to begin learning the tradecraft that sets a proper shinobi apart from a mere thug. Teenagers working their way along the coast road aren’t at all uncommon, though this isn’t the season for the olive harvest when he’d have groups to blend into.

They catch up with the boy then. He’s stopped in the road to wait for them. He looks up at Kisame with his blue eyes shining like the sea. “Boss, look!” In the bowl of his cupped hands, a water drop the size of an eyeball shimmers, connected to his skin by a thin stem. He can’t make it hover yet, it seems, but he’s got the right idea.

“Very good,” Kisame praises. “Is it fresh or salt?”

Mirya blinks as if the question hasn’t occurred to him yet. He pops the water drop in his mouth. “Fresh,” he reports. “Little bit limey, like well water. How can it taste alkaline when I summoned it out of thin air?”

“What water did you most often drink at home?”

“Oh!” A nod, like that’s all he needs to figure out the rest, and then he’s off again, singing in his weird language full of V’s and K’s.

When Kisame glances at Itachi to see what he makes of this, the Sharingan is just fading out of his eyes. “Interesting,” Itachi says.

“Oh?”

“That water was much colder than I would expect it to be. Is he gathering it by condensation?”

“Shouldn’t be, no. The exercises I gave him are straight conversion. Chakra to matter, just like I do it, the fast way. With reserves like that he doesn’t need chakra-saving tricks.”

“Yes, I see. Thus the minerals in the water that he expected to find there. Earth secondary, do you think?”

“Could be. I don’t want to assume, since earth and water are all I’ve demonstrated for him. Give him a taste of fire when we camp, if you don’t mind. Let’s see what he can pick up.”

Itachi nods distractedly. His eyes spin red again as he stares at Mirya’s back. “He _is_ … he’s changing its temperature instinctively. He expects well water to be cold, and so the water he creates is cold. That has some intriguing implications.”

Accordingly, when they set up their camp that evening, Itachi instructs Mirya to watch with his chakra sense while he lights the fire. It’s a very small fireball, but hot enough to charcoal the wood in the center of the pile in seconds. Itachi turns to Mirya, who questioningly mimes the first hand sign of the sequence. Itachi shows him slowly. Lets him practice it a time or two. Kisame is about to prompt Itachi to describe how the chakra is supposed to move in the body, because fire comes from a different place than water, when Mirya suddenly flicks through the signs and spits a tiny flame.

“Ow!” he laughs, hand to his mouth. “How do you not get burned, Crow Boss? Owww that’s gonna blister.” Mirya looks expectantly into his cupped palm. Water bells up like a gravity-reversed faucet drip — and clouds over as it turns to slush. Mirya holds it against his burned lips and sighs relief.

“Kekkei genkai,” Kisame says, delighted.

“Mmf?”

“An inborn ability, instinctive, something that most shinobi can’t do. Usually it’s genetic, like Itachi’s Sharingan eyes.”

“Which, _so_ cool looking,” Mirya gurgles through his handful of slush.

“Most find it frightening,” Itachi says softly. If Kisame didn’t know better, he’d think Itachi was flattered.

“Nn-nh. ’S pretty.”

Kisame continues, “Combined or advanced nature releases are another kind of kekkei genkai. And ice is one of the rarest. Congratulations!” He grins.

Rather than grin back, sore-mouthed as he is, Mirya raises a victory fist instead. Kisame obligingly bumps it. The boy’s eyes are more baffled than excited, though. He doesn’t know enough about ninjutsu to understand the path opening before him. Kisame muses, “I wonder if Momochi is still alive. That kid of his has an ice release. Maybe he could teach Mirya a few things.”

Itachi actually chuckles a bit. “What a convenient bloodline limit to have in the desert. We can all sip slush drinks like tourists. Come here, let me heal that.”

It’s genuinely sweet how they lean toward each other, how Itachi gathers what healing chakra he can manage into the tips of his fingers, how Mirya goes crosseyed trying to watch. The redness of the burn fades, and they smile at each other. Kisame nearly holds his breath to keep from breaking the moment, lest Itachi realize he’s behaving in a brotherly way and force himself cold again. 

Mirya reaches for his pouch of trap supplies and fishing hooks and so on, but Itachi catches his wrist. “I’ll cook tonight. You should practice your elements. It’s impressive you were able to use fire at all, with a water affinity as strong as yours. The others should be easier.”

“Thanks, Tachi!” Mirya beams. While Itachi is still visibly figuring out whether he hates the nickname, Mirya turns to Kisame: “Okay, earth, show me earth!”

By the time it’s full dark and their supper of instant noodles with fried tofu is done, Kisame has discovered that — despite the ice release that would suggest a wind secondary — Mirya’s secondary affinity is actually _earth_ , nearly as strong as his water. Wind comes easily to him, but it’s halfhearted. He just doesn’t seem to _like_ it very much. His fire is weak and hard to control; lightning, he can’t release at all. As they eat, Kisame and Itachi discuss theory, and conclude that the most likely explanation for having ice release but an earth secondary is simply that Mirya’s instinct is to use wind mainly to modify water, whereas earth is something he manipulates separately. Those instincts can be trained later. Having three strong elements is more than enough to keep Mirya occupied for a good long while.

The last thing they do before sending Mirya to bed is, as usual, sword practice. Kisame doesn’t introduce anything new. No need to overcrowd the fry’s head. They just do a kata to warm up, practice some blocks and strikes, then repeat the kata to cool down.

Itachi has already tucked into his sleeping bag and looks nearly asleep. Kisame points Mirya at his bed with an absent hair-ruffle, already looking uphill for a good spot to take his watch. There are no proper trees to climb here. After pacing the ridge above their camping spot a bit, not bothering to silence his footsteps in the wiry yellow grass, he selects a comfortable looking boulder and settles in. To the east, the sea glints darkly. The slightest differentiation between horizon and sky hints at the coming moonrise. West, the hills climb higher. Not mountains yet, those are hidden by the nearer hills, but he imagines he can feel them waiting. He can just make out the road below. In a shallow bowl of land between road and hill, shielded from the sea wind by a copse of scrub oak, his boys sleep by the dying fire.

What a strange thought. His boys. He supposes Mirya might be, though the apprenticeship isn’t official yet, but Itachi? Jounin. ANBU. Legend. Thinking of him as someone to protect is nonsensical.

And yet. Just at this moment, under this clear, clear sky, Kisame finds he’s more aware of Itachi’s age than his power. If Kisame had gotten his first girlfriend pregnant he could have a child that age. How odd, how odd… and how even odder that it isn’t uncomfortable to feel this. In Akatsuki, Itachi is his equal. But in life experience? So lopsided and so cruelly pruned. He’s grown in such a strange shape. Mirya, for his part, is a crazy little weed. An unkillable kudzu of a soul. All Kisame has to do is show him a possibility and off he goes.

 _What am I thinking, that I can protect them?_ He laughs silently at himself. _We’re all killers. Brittle as Itachi or wild as Mirya or… what, salty? as I, we’re all just murderers when you strip away the frills. I can talk about blooding my new sword, but Mirya’s killed already, he isn’t afraid of it. Itachi, I think, is afraid of himself all the time. Nothing I can do to ease that. He wouldn’t accept it. I’m not their father, and they wouldn’t want me to be._

Still. Still, they’re twelve and fourteen, and he’s thirty-two. There are things he can do for them. Like, just maybe, helping them figure out how to connect to each other without ripping at the scabs where their families were torn away. 


	8. The One That Got Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people actually like fish stories

“I think it’s my birthday!” the Uzu boy announces as he leans a spear against the bar.

“No weapons in here,” Yoko says automatically.

“It’s not a weapon. It’s a harpoon. What’s the date?”

She holds her hand out demandingly until the boy shrugs and hands it over. She props it where no customer can easily reach it. He can ask for it back when he leaves. “November 28th.”

“Oops, _yesterday_ was my birthday. Can I still get a free drink?”

“No. You couldn’t get a free drink yesterday either. How old are you?”

“Thirteen!”

“You can’t get a drink at all, what the hell.”

The boy makes puppy eyes. “Don’t you have like… juice and stuff? For mixers? I’m so thirsty, Auntie…”

Down at the end of the bar, old Daichi slaps his hand on the wood and shouts, “Let the little guy have some OJ, Yoko, don’t be so stingy!”

“It’s on your tab then, pal. I got a business to run.”

The ginger takes his juice and scoots down to join Daichi, looking way too happy for a day that’s already hot enough to make Yoko feel like she weighs three tons. She’s not sure if she’s annoyed to have customers — she was kinda thinking of having a nap before the lunch crowd blows in — or glad of the entertainment. The kid’s a stitch, the way he chatters at the old man like having a one-legged drunk buy him juice is the pinnacle of his life’s arc so far.

“A harpooner, eh? Already, at your age?” Daichi is saying in response to the chatter. “That is a nice one you got there, too. Expensive for a lil twerp like you. Where’d you get it?”

“Tea Country! My captain gave me it, on my last boat, he was so nice, I was like oh wow are you sure and he was like tuna don’t catch itself, right? I hear there’s marlin on the southern coast, I never fished marlin before. Did you ever?”

Yoko rolls her eyes. “Here we go.” So much for entertainment. “Daichi’s marlin story. _Again_.”

“Sorry, lady, but it’s new to me!”

Daichi tells his marlin story. The kid eats it up. In return, he tells an orca story. _Orca_. Crazy. That’s a long-ass way to travel just to stab a fish. According to the kid, orcas are absolute bastards. They’ll drown seals for fun and then play ball with the corpse. Delicious, though. Like bacon, but fish.

Yoko gets the grill fired up and starts setting condiments out when she hears voices calling down by the docks. Net fishermen go out before dawn, and by noon they’re ravenous. Used to be her best moneymaker. Now, though…

“What’ll you give me for this pretty, pretty mackerel?” calls the first man through the door — which is her brother Hiro, and he ought to know better.

“That and 20 ryou will get you a beer, you think running this place is free? I’m gonna flush the toilet fifty times tonight while you shower.”

“Don’t be that way, imouto, everybody’s freezer’s full and we’re hungryyyyyy.”

She makes a rude noise and stabs her boning knife into the counter. “You clean it.”

As Hiro goes out to make a mess in the back yard, the Uzu kid sticks his nose in with no tact whatsoever: “What’s he mean, everybody’s freezer’s full? Don’t y’all sell your catch?”

“Don’t even talk to me about this,” Yoko grumps. She pointedly turns her back and pretends greasing the grill takes concentration. “Fuckin mackerel. _Hiro_.”

Daichi, having been reduced to a spectator by the anchor line that took his leg off, and therefore the biggest gossip in the world, happily explains. “Only up the coast, these days, and that market’s sat-ur-at-ed.” Big vocab from ol’ Daichi today. “We can’t get inland anymore, the road’s blocked.”

“Huh? By what?”

“By _who_ , is the question.” Daichi taps his nose.

Hiro comes blowing back in with the fillets, and then the rest of the net-fishing crew is crowding around, and Yoko has to focus on yelling at everyone who insists on bringing dripping and in some cases live fish into her establishment and trying to swap them for things that she has to buy with _actual money, boys, you remember that stuff? I can’t make sake out of fish!_ So she misses Daichi’s take on the situation. But she knows what he’ll be telling the kid, because it’s what any of them would say: it’s Bandit-Hime’s fault. Some blueblooded bitch and her private army set up shop and started ‘charging tolls’, which is nob for robbing folk, and nobody with any authority will touch her because nobility, so all the traffic just rerouted a few hundred kilometers north. No panel wagon can carry enough ice to keep their fish fresh that long. So anything they can’t get rid of by sailing it up to Hantozen, they can’t get rid of at all.

By the time she can hear Daichi again, the kid is asking, “So Bandit-Hime must be running out of folks to rob by now, right? Aren’t you scared she’s gonna come down here?”

“Well, what would we do about that?” Daichi shrugs. “Nothing to steal here anyway, ‘cept fish. Yoko!”

Yoko plunks a fresh sake flask in front of him and takes the coins he slides across the bar. That’s why she puts up with him; he still pays in ryou.. At his gesture, she refills the kid’s juice as well. “I doubt robbing fish trucks is what Bandit-Hime’s really there for,” she puts in.

“Then what?” The kid’s blue eyes widen. “Ooh, do you think she’s digging for treasure?”

“What? No. I think she’s up to some shenanigans against the Daimyo. She’s his, I dunno, fifth cousin double backwards removed or something.”

“ _Could_ be digging for treasure,” Daichi says slowly. “There’s old silver mines up there.”

Yoko scoffs. “Those were played out ages ago. She thinks she’s gonna dig silver, good luck to ‘er. You fellas want some lunch?”

They want some lunch. The boy pays for his own share, remarkably enough, and the glimpse she gets of his purse shows it’s far from empty afterwards. Tuna fishing in Tea Country is how you make bank, apparently. Why he wants to come out to the ass end of nowhere just to kill a marlin is beyond her. Probably a man thing.

After eating, he asks for his harpoon back, making to leave, but it takes another half hour for him to meander out the door, since all the guys gotta talk about the damn fish stabbing process like they know anything about it, net-haulers that they all are. Yoko belatedly realizes that the kid’s not likely to leave town this late in the day even if this isn’t where he wants to try his marlin thing, and calls out, “You gonna want a room tonight? Ain’t big but the door locks. 300 ryou, I’ll throw in coffee and toast in the morning.”

“I might? I wanna look at some things, I’ll come back in a bit. Thanks for the juice, pops!”

Hiro, picking his teeth with a fish bone, watches the boy go. “Fuckin’ Kiri.”

“What? What about ‘em?”

“Made the Uzu everybody else’s problem.”

“Oh.” She thinks about it, and wrinkles her nose in agreement. “Yeah. Rude.”

* * *

Mirya is the last to their rendezvous, but that’s not unexpected. Itachi has been checking up on him occasionally via crow. Not that he was worried, it’s just better to know where one’s team is. Mirya has no real training in stealth, so his method of making sure he isn’t followed was to go a kilometer out of his way in the wrong direction. Itachi hands him a cup of cooled tea as he arrives, assuming he’s thirsty. The way the boy drinks it isn’t the gulping of dehydration, though, so maybe he’s been making his own water with chakra. Drinking your own chakra: an amusing thought. 

The three of them sit in the shade of a desert cottonwood while Mirya gives his report. Their campsite is around a knuckle of rocky hill from the fishing village, beside a spring that’s barely more than a dampness in the dirt in this season, though there’s a soup-bowl-sized clear pool right at the rock face it oozes from. It would be a good place to spend several days. It doesn’t sound like that will be necessary, though.

His report isn’t surprising given what the others have learned. The villagers aren’t anywhere near starving, and probably won’t really feel the pinch of poverty unless this keeps up for years, though their diet might lose some variety. But they’re not wealthy either and never have been. The whole town pooling its funds couldn’t hire them. They don’t seem very upset about the ‘bandits’, though. “I hinted about those mines that are on the map, but apparently they’re played out. I didn’t ask directly,” Mirya says, fishing for praise, “I was like, ooh, what if she’s digging for treasure, and the old guy who bought me juice just jumped right on in there.”

“That’s how it works,” Kisame nods.

“I looked into the source of the request,” Itachi says. “As I suspected, the portmaster simply passed it on. He wasn’t the one who wrote it, and he certainly didn’t fund it. Kisame-san?”

Kisame’s baritone is even more amused than usual: “That smugglers’ cave I found? Tea. It’s just tea! Low quality stuff with forged tax stamps. No guards, either; I think the smugglers are just fishermen from town who make a little on the side selling things that fell off the back of a freighter.”

“Wouldn’t the tea be all soaked and gross?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Mirya-kun. The point is that the hit wasn’t put out by her criminal competition either. These part-timers could never afford it. You’re right, Itachi-san, it’s politics.”

Itachi puts his fingertips to his lips, thinking. There’s been a bit of bad feeling growing between Suna and the Wind Daimyo recently, if rumors are to be believed. _Could this be more of our mysterious secret leader’s meddling?_ But of course, he isn’t supposed to know that ‘Pain’ isn’t the real mastermind. Even Kisame wouldn’t let it slide if Itachi gave a hint of those suspicions. Therefore: “Leader-sama hasn’t said anything about the Wind Daimyo either way, so there’s no reason not to complete the mission.”

While Mirya cocks his head curiously, picking up only that there’s subtext here but not what it is, Kisame speaks up for the agenda Itachi’s not supposed to know about. “I’d like to know more. Would you be so kind as to summon a crow, Itachi-san? I’ll prepare the message.”

“As you wish,” Itachi says neutrally. The answer Madara will send through Nagato is of great interest to him, but naturally his bitter outward persona doesn’t care. 

He performs the summoning. He asks only for Mica, but Crystal and Key arrive as well, simply out of curiosity. While Mica perches on Kisame’s shoulder to watch him write in a tiny scroll, the other two swarm all over Mirya to tug his hair and caw in his ears. Mirya laughs, delighted. He pets their feathers, lets them nibble his fingers, gives them his wrists to perch on, doesn’t wince when their talons scratch his bare forearms. “You’re so pretty!” he tells them. “You’re full of rainbows, look at you all shiny in the sun!”

“ _You’re_ so pretty!” Key returns, tugging a few copper strands out.

“Ow,” Mirya pouts, but he doesn’t move to evict her.

“Key,” Itachi scolds, “I’ve told you about hair-pulling.”

Key huffs, unrepentant. She flutters to Kisame to share the stolen goods with Mica.

“I’m sorry, Mirya-kun,” Itachi says. “They like shiny things, and your hair looks like metal.”

“I can see you trying not to laugh,” Mirya retorts.

“I see you doing the same.”

“Busted.” Mirya lets the laugh out.

Once the message is sent, Kisame hands Mirya the knapsack filled with his things, since the boy can’t use storage scrolls yet. “Take the bartender up on that room she offered. We’re going to scout the bandits; we’ll be a few days. Your stealth isn’t good enough,” he interrupts when Mirya opens his mouth to protest. “You’d get us caught.”

Mirya sags, dejected, but can’t deny it. “I guess I’ll just… fish?”

“And do your chakra exercises. Give the sword practice a rest, though; you’re supposed to be a civilian.”

“I’ve a text on cryptography I could lend you,” Itachi offers. “If you’d like to get started on tradecraft.” Then he lets out an oof, because Mirya suddenly hugs him. He could’ve evaded, but it just didn’t seem… right to? Awkwardly, he pats Mirya’s back twice before pushing him off. Mirya’s grinning like he knows just how uncomfortable Itachi is as he bounces over to hug Kisame as well. The swordsman takes it with much better grace.

They don’t watch the boy go, but set off toward the hills. There should be a rough tracery of old mining roads good enough for foot passage, even if it doesn’t help the villagers with their fish-wagon problem. “What good does it do her to set up here?” Itachi muses softly. Sometimes it helps to think out loud. Explaining his thoughts to Kisame makes him slow down and go over them step by step. Sometimes his mind leaps over parts of the process that, when he examines them more deliberately, reveal other paths of inquiry, or pieces of evidence he didn’t give proper attention to. “Those old silver mines? Earth specialists could still get some ore out, I suppose, but…”

“But who could afford to hire shinobi for mining?”

Yes, that’s the obvious drawback. “So it isn’t the metal she wants, but the tunnels, for hiding or for storage. If she is indeed in the mines, of course. The location might be coincidence.”

“There’s nothing else out there.”

“That we know of.”

* * *

It’s around noon the next day when Yoko gets tired of knocking. “You only paid for one day, kid,” she calls, loudly jingling her keys. “I’m comin’ in, so putcher pants on!” Just like when she knocked to tell him breakfast was ready, and when she knocked to tell him it was getting cold, and when she knocked to tell him she wasn’t saving it any longer, there’s no reply, not even a snore or a rustle of blanket.

She turns the key in the lock. Standing back, she pushes the door open with her broom; she’s had folks trap their doors before. Nothing. She looks in, half expecting to find the kid drunk, or maybe sick. But he isn’t there at all. Did he sneak out somehow? Well, his reward for being a sneaky lil’ shit is he gets to pick up his belongings from behind the bar. Why he wouldn’t take his harpoon with him, though… or his shoes…

Or his clothes…

Yeah, something’s not right here.


	9. A Normal Job Interview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is more pre-hiring evaluation than they ever did in canon

He doesn’t so much wake up as realize he’s been awake for a while.

Things have been happening. He doesn’t remember them. People are here; he doesn’t know them. He doesn’t know where ‘here’ is but it smells really different from where he was. He’s been talking? He’s still talking. He’s not making a lot of sense. The people are talking too, and he has to listen really hard to make sense of what they’re saying. He feels all right, though. He feels like he's getting clearer, but he thinks he might've felt that before and he can't remember what he did after thinking that. It's a little bit like the potion Dad gave him for the sacrifice, so he wouldn't be too focused on physical distress to do his spiritual duty. The sense of warm well-being is the same.

With some effort, he can distinguish between the physical presences in the room and the spiritual ones. Only three of the former. Familiar by now; he's been here a while. All three are wearing the same red cloud coats Kisame and Itachi have. That's... a good sign? One that feels like cool scales sliding on stone is talking to one that feels like dangerous books, pages rustling threateningly. The third, on the other side of where he lies (on a padded bench? His legs hang off the end) feels like dry caves pierced with roots, but with a different danger than he remembers from his father. Dad felt like... strange, but in a way that made sense, just an alien kind of sense. Like maybe that's how people thought before maps and reading, back when the darkness of a cave could lead anywhere. This cave god feels like madness, like hiding. Mirya _does not like it_. As much as anything can bother him right now, that guy bothers him. He's the one the spiritual presences are stuck to, too.

“I could suppress his chakra entirely with a seal, of course," says the scaley chakra to the papery one, "but unless you’re quite sure what the effect will be on his… passenger… I wouldn’t advise it, my dear.”

Mirya finally gets his eyes to focus on the one who said that bit, and lets out an appreciative gasp. “Your eyes are so pretty. Are you a boy or a girl?”

The lovely creature with the waterfall hair smiles down at him, a thin wide smile that’s maybe supposed to look insincere, except he can tell it’s not really. “Yes,” the creature answers.

“That’s cool. You’re a snake god,” he confirms.

“How flattering,” the snake god croons.

From his other side, the dark and seething cave god in the orange mask gives a whooping giggle that’s just as fake-but-not as the snake god’s smile. “He’s still tripping balls, Oro-sama, I think you gave him too much!”

It seems to take forever to roll his head to face the cave god. The eye behind the mask’s single hole is as black and cold as Itachi’s, but instead of the glossy living black of still water, it’s the nothing-black of blindness. Mirya doesn’t want to look at that. He looks past — oh, there’s a big doorway and it’s raining outside — at the spirit mass instead. He sort of waves his mind in and out of focus until the scribble/cloud/feeling/aura/pressure resolves with an abrupt heaviness that makes his stomach feel nasty. “You have ghosts on you,” he warns.

“So you keep saying!”

“Do I?” He can’t remember what-all he’s said already, but that’s fine. Everything’s fine. “You have two ghosts. One loves you and one hates you.”

“Oho! That’s new information! Tell me more about the ghosts, will you?”

“Not now, Tobi,” says the paper goddess. “If he’s becoming more lucid, I might be able to get proper answers.”

He doesn’t think he wants to talk to her. He keeps talking to the cave god instead. “The one who loves you is on your shoulders. She’s angry but in a nice way? Like your mom if you broke something. The one who hates you is in your heart. He makes you even angrier. He has a lot of hair.” Unfortunately, the goddess is determined to get between them and claim his attention; Mirya raises his voice to make sure his point is understood. “A _lot_ of hair!”

The snake god gives a high-pitched chuckle, but the cave god doesn’t laugh. Yeah, he knows what Mirya’s talking about.

The goddess fills his field of view. She’s pretty, but her skin has a weird texture, like she’s made of papier-mache. “Blue hair, blonde eyes. You’re like my mom only backwards. You glare like her too. I bet you’re in charge here.”

“Is she the one who sealed that chakra entity in you?”

He blinks a few times. He tries, but he’s just… unable to parse that sentence. “I don’t know what that means.”

She touches his sternum, and it makes him shudder; not because she isn’t gentle, but because he can sense that if she wanted to, she could tear him apart with just such a casual touch. “You’re something like a jinchuuriki, boy. Did you know that?”

Jinchuuriki — human force pillar? “What does that _mean_?” he whines, sounding about four.

“It means you have a god inside you,” Tobi says.

“Er… don’t we all?”

“Konan-san, perhaps I can make him understand,” the snake god volunteers. They turn Mirya’s head with cool fingertips so he can meet their astonishing slit-pupilled eyes. “Have you heard of the bijuu, my dear? No? Well, Kisame did tell us you’re from very far away. They’re chakra entities; beings of pure force. Gods, in a sense. In order to keep them from trampling cities beneath their paws, hooves, etcetera, they were sealed into human vessels. We thought they were the only chakra entities extant, but it seems you have something of the sort inside you, and it’s quite loosely attached!” They deliver this alarming information as if it amuses them, which he appreciates. When you gotta laugh or cry, pick laughing. “Just barely tethered to you by these seals on your wrists!” They lift Mirya’s arm to examine the underside.

“Those are maps,” Mirya says, bewildered. “Not seals. They’re coastline maps.”

“Is that so? But they are also seals, dear child, and the mass of chakra within you interacts very strangely with them! I’ve never seen seals quite like them! Who did these?”

“My dad.”

“What’s his name?” Konan-san says.

“Viktor! Do you know him? No, of course you don’t know him. Kisame says nobody’s heard of my clan.”

“What clan is that?”

“Kivi.” He squints at her. “Not Kibi. Kivi. And it’s nothing to do with dango. Itachi’s just a munchy piggins who can’t stop thinking about food. How come he’s so skinny? He eats _so much dango_ , lady, and he’s just as skinny as a stick. I should feed him better. Eh, maybe he’s having a growth spurt?”

“Is it up to you to feed Itachi?”

“I do all the chores! It’s to repay Shark Boss for the lessons.”

“What lessons?”

He suddenly remembers he’s supposed to be being a civilian, though he can’t remember why, so he clamps his mouth shut and scowls at her. It’s not long before the words build up in his throat, though. He can’t keep his mouth shut anymore. He can’t. He can only maybe steer what he says a little bit. “Anybody could put on a coat and say they’re friends with Kisame-san,” he accuses.

She smiles. It looks fake and it actually is. “Would you like a coat of your own?”

“Well, yeah, but —“

“Then we need to know more about you.”

“Why don’t you just ask Kisame if you’re such good friends with him? Ha, can’t answer that, can you? Fake Akatsuki!”

The cave god laughs so hard he falls down. The snake god smirks and lifts one flawless eyebrow. The paper goddess touches her fingertips delicately to her brow as if she has a headache. She’s wearing a ring! A ring like Kisame and Itachi have! Mirya grabs for it, but even if she weren’t way faster than him, his hand doesn’t obey him in any way and just goes wobbling all over the place. She notices what he’s looking at, though, and holds it where he can see it. “You can’t simply buy one of these,” she points out. “And if we caught anyone wearing our cloaks who wasn’t a member, we would kill them. Surely you know that.”

He makes an _iunno_ noise. “Shark Boss doesn’t wanna tell me much until I meet the others, I think. Cuz there’s secrets. Which I don’t know, so I can’t tell you, so nyeh. If you’re fake you’re outta luck, and if you’re real you shoulda talked to Shark Boss first. Very impolite!” he scolds. He gives the snake god a beseeching look. “I’m sobering up and I can’t see the ghosts anymore, can I have another dose?”

“Now, that is something I don’t hear very often. What do you say, hmm?”

“Please,” Mirya says obediently, before realizing that the snake god was talking to the paper goddess.

“I remind him of his mother,” she says dryly. “I think I’ll leave the rest to you. He isn’t lying, at any rate. Kisame can keep him.”

“That's up to Kisame-sensei, not you,” he grumbles. But she’s gone, and the snake god is poking his arm vein with a weird-looking needle. What did the cave god call them? “Oro-sama?” They look up at that, so it’s probably right. “Do you summon snakes?”

“I do. Would you like to see?”

Mirya nods eagerly. “Can I see your smallest snake?”

“My _smallest_? A strange request, but I don’t see why not.” They summon — but he can’t see what they summoned, not until they hold their graceful white hand up to show him. The snake curled in that pale palm is a beautiful glossy blue-black, with a yellow band just behind the head that makes it look like it’s wearing a gold necklace, and it’s no thicker than a pencil.

It’s. Adorable? Mirya squishes his cheeks and makes a noise like a teakettle.

“Would you like to hold her?” the snake god offers.

Mirya nods, begins to reach, but pulls his hand back when he sees how it wobbles. “No, I’m too loopy, I’d drop her. I don’t want to drop her. Ohhh she’s looking at me, hi sweetheart, hi you’re so precious, do you know how precious you are?”

“Yesss,” says the snake.

“That’s good because you are very precious and you should be happy always.”

“Orochimaru-sssama,” the snake says in its tiny raspy voice, “this one isss worthy.”

That wide, flat, fake-but-not smile comes again. “I shall make a note of it.”

The cave god pops up off the floor and pushes his orange mask close to Mirya’s face. “Are you stoned again yet? Tell me more about the ghosts.”

Mirya nods; that’s important. He finally tries to sit up. Nobody helps him, so it takes a bit, but he’s had practice functioning in altered states and he’s starting to get the hang of this one. It’s woolier than than mushrooms but not as swoopy as alcohol. A little bit opiate-adjacent, in the almost nightmarish clarity of detail, except that he’s not sleepy. He can think quite complex sentences. His impulse control is totally shot and he’s even more of a chatterbox than usual — to the point where he realizes, belatedly, that he’s said quite a lot of that out loud.

“It’s good data,” Oro-sama says, “I appreciate it.” They’ve let their cute snake hide in their collar and are making notes in a little wire-bound book.

“You’re welcome?” He looks around, trying not to get lost in the weave of the couch he was lying on or the individual raindrops falling on the stone balcony beyond where Tobi sits. His mind is cataloguing so much information it’s a bit overwhelming. “This is a different drug from before,” he realizes.

“It’s not, but previously it was interacting with another. Tobi gave you a sedative so you wouldn’t wake up while he moved you. That seems to have worn off. Now you’re enjoying my custom-blended truth serum. Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing,” he says sincerely. “It’s not that great for ghost viewing, though, I’m too present now. Do you have a drum?”

Oro-sama glances questioningly at Tobi, who shrugs. Oro-sama looks stern. Tobi shrugs harder. “What?” Tobi demands.

“You have all sorts of rubbish in your summoning space, Tobi-kun. Are you telling me you don’t have a drum?”

“I’ve never had any use for a drum before, Oro-sama, I’m sorry! Forgive foolish Tobi!”

“Ah well. You’ll have to ask him about these ghosts of yours another time, then.”

Mirya offers, “I’ll do it with a better trance drug. This one’s a thinking drug, not a feeling drug. For now, listen to the little girl and ignore the man with the hair, okay? He gives really bad advice. He smells like _appalling_ life decisions.”

Instead of answering, Tobi just stares at him from behind his mask for a minute, then vanishes into nothing like water going down a drain.

“Poor fellow, he’s quite insane,” Oro-sama gloats. “Now, let’s talk more about you.”

Mirya reexamines his vague resolve not to tell these people anything until he gets the okay from Kisame or Itachi, and realizes it's not very logical. He doesn't know anything important (his brain skips easily over Itachi's situation as 'personal, just gossip') and he's really getting a strong impression that they only want to make sure he's not a spy or an idiot. They're not asking about Shark Boss's plans, just about himself, his origins and abilities. That being the case, he shrugs and says, "Do you have a snake big enough I wouldn't drop it? Let me cuddle cute snakes and I'll tell you all about me."

"A fair exchange," the snake god smiles.

* * *

The Uzu kid wanders downstairs in boxers and a t-shirt at about three in the afternoon, looking grimy and dazed. Yoko is a good person and does not deserve this bullshit. She spreads her arms with a demanding glare. The boy ruffles sheepishly at the back of his head. “Where were you?” she demands. “I looked in at noon and you weren’t there! The door was locked, how — ugh, put some clothes on, all your stuff is back here.”

He dives for his pack. “I must’ve been sleepwalking,” he says with a helpless grin. “I woke up in the closet.”

“You’re telling me you got up out of the nice bed I made for you, got in the closet, shut the door —“

“And fell asleep on the spare futon, yeah. Too much time on boats, Auntie. I’m used to tiny bunks.”

“Ugh. I need to clean it out, apparently, you’re all — over — crap —“

“Imouto, why are you beating a half naked child?” Hiro asks from the back door.

“Because he’s _dusty_ ,” Yoko snaps, not pausing in her efforts to get the cobwebs off the kid’s t-shirt before he puts his jacket on and grinds them in for the long haul.

“I’m not naked!” And _now_ he tries to cover up his boxer shorts, ears turning crimson.

“I’m a widow and you’re thirteen,” she says with an eyeroll, “your undies ain’t new _or_ interesting.” Hiro just stands there snickering like the unhelpful ass he is. Yoko makes a face at him. “You got any siblings, kid?

“A big sister. She’s like that too.”

“They’re all like that,” Yoko declares, while Hiro continues to laugh his tiny brain out.


	10. Mycoremediation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would explain some things

“Deserts are the literal worst.”

“Agreed.”

“Look at me. I don’t belong in the desert.”

“I think you’re doing a little better than I am, Itachi-san.”

“Uchihas don’t have skin pigment. We are made of rice paper. We’re origami people. Or, wait, you know what actually? We’re probably a kind of fungus. I’m going to shrivel up and turn gray and then split open and spores will come out.”

Kisame tries to feel Itachi’s forehead to see if he’s got heatstroke; Itachi dodges. Kisame points out, “I have gills.”

“So do mushrooms.”

“I wish we’d brought Mirya-kun. He could make us ice packs.” Kisame pauses in the shade of a particularly steep section of road cut to get his canteen out. It’s not that he couldn’t drench himself with water to cool off, but salt water drying on his skin would be worse than the sweat and grit he’s already coated with. 

Itachi is leaning against the rock wall, fanning himself with his hat, looking exhausted. He can’t really be that tired, they haven’t done anything. The amount of chakra it takes to regulate their temperature is miniscule, it’s just that the fine control is mentally wearing. After drinking from his own canteen, he clears his throat several times, hides his face behind his hat, and spits delicately in the road. He glares at Kisame for laughing at his maidenly habits — or begins to, but a coughing fit interrupts him.

“Tie something over your face for the dust,” Kisame suggests. 

Shaking his head, Itachi rinses his mouth and spits again before answering. “Not dust in my lungs. I’ve felt a cold coming on since before we left Hantozen. The dry air is helping. Or it was.”

“If this turns into bronchitis again…”

“What if it does?” Itachi challenges, with a look that says as clearly as words, _I dare you to try benching me, it didn’t work last time and it never will._

Kisame shrugs. “We’ll get you some vitamins. We could rest for an extra day in the fishing village.”

“I’m not so fragile that I can’t camp out in warm, dry weather. Don’t insult me. Anyway, I’m _fine_ , it’s just a cold.”

Since Itachi proved himself perfectly capable, last spring, of using medical chakra as a cough suppressant during combat, there’s not much Kisame can say to that. It’s certainly no use pointing out that Itachi is acting rather alarmingly like a real teenager, rather than the miniature fortysomething he usually is. If he’s still sick when they reach their destination (the Bandit-hime mission isn’t the destination, it’s just something to do on the way), it shouldn’t be hard to manufacture reasons to stay indoors and eat hearty food for a week or two.

Amusing as it is to listen to Itachi complain (and try to figure out if he’s being funny on purpose), it’s time for a topic change, Kisame decides as they move out again. “So, how do you want to do it?”

“Do which?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t planned for both options.”

“ _Both_ ,” Itachi scoffs. “There are at least _four_ plausible directions we could take.”

“Either we do the job or we don’t, what are the other two?”

The look Itachi gives him is unimpressed. “Don’t play dumb, Kisame-san, it doesn’t flatter me. Depending on the reply we get from Leader-sama, we could go ahead with the mission as written — that is, kill Yamakaze Sasako and her officers, and them only, as that’s all we’ve been paid for. We could eliminate the entire group, including noncombatants, to sow terror and bolster our reputation. We could return the mission scroll to Hantozen, stating that we’ve chosen to refuse after all — which would reflect poorly on Akatsuki, but Leader-sama has changed his mind about missions before, I believe, when there was something sketchy about them.”

“Once or twice, yeah. I’m not playing dumb, though; it sincerely didn’t occur to me that Leader-sama might order scorched earth. _Maybe_ this is high profile enough for that? Probably not, though.”

“Probably not,” Itachi agrees, “but even I can’t see the full pattern of Leader-sama’s plan.”

Kisame recognizes fishing when he sees it. He doesn’t take offense — he’d be disappointed in Itachi if he _didn’t_ seek more information despite being told it’s above his clearance, honestly. They’re shinobi. But that doesn’t mean he’s taking the bait. “As for the fourth option, I can’t even guess. You’ll have to tell me.”

“You saw the same things I saw. Did you truly not notice what an interesting position she’s in economically? The fact that it’s taking so long to get a reply tells me our leader wasn’t aware of her and is having to do some research. We might be told to ally with her. She could be useful.”

“I suppose she could be…” He wrinkles his nose skeptically. “Hard to defend, though. She’s relying completely on the Daimyo not wanting to be seen attacking his own nobles. Which, it turns out, is not something he’s especially worried about.” A vague gesture indicating himself, Itachi, and the vast potential for murder that goes along with them.

“Worried enough to hire missing-nin, at least. He cares about deniability. We could do something with that. Or Leader-sama could, anyway. I’m not trained enough in politics to see how it would work, but _he_ clearly knows where to put the lever in.”

Kisame chuckles. “That he does.” Poor Itachi, so curious, but he’s going to have to wait years for the truth. Madara doesn’t have the best reputation among his clan. Or didn’t, when there was a clan. Not that Itachi has any moral high ground to judge from, but he’s not going to have the perspective to realize it, faced with his childhood bogeyman. They’ll tell him when he’s older and steadier, Madara said, and Kisame knows he’s right. 

“I know it isn’t likely,” Itachi admits. “Leader-sama is cultivating the Wind Daimyo for a reason, even if I don’t know what the reason is. But Bandit-hime could make us _so much money_.”

“If it’s about money, you should’ve written to Kakuzu.”

As he’d hoped, that gets a laugh, though laughing brings on another cough. “Regarding your original question,” Itachi says when he’s fired another ladylike gob of spit into the roadside weeds, “it depends on whether you want to have Mirya-kun fight. It would be difficult to protect him in a massed battle. He’s still essentially a civilian. His reflexes are slow, his situational awareness is pathetic, and a few weeks of kenjutsu drills isn’t adequate preparation to spar with anyone who’s not holding back, let alone face multiple opponents in lethal combat.”

Kisame started waving off these objections midway through, and by the end of the recitation he’s getting impatient. “Yes, yes, that’s not news, none of that is news, what I want is to see how he deals with the pressure, and how willing he is to kill. You know there’s no substitute for that, and no preparing either. How old were you when --?”

“Eight. The same as he was. But of course we only have his word for it.”

“Exactly. It’s not that I think he’s lied to us. But we don’t have much context. I need to see him in action before I can make the final decision on his apprenticeship.”

Itachi raises an eyebrow. “You mean you haven’t?”

“Obviously he’s staying with us. But I’m not fully certain yet that he should commit to the path of the swordsman. He’s a sensor with a rare nature release; it’s almost a waste to make a kenjutsu master out of him, blasphemous as it feels to say so. Unless he feels the call of the sword path, it would be better to focus on ninjutsu.”

“In which case, his teacher would be…? Oh, Kisame, no.”

“Oh, Itachi, yes. You’re the specialist’s specialist. You’re going to have to teach him at least a few things either way. The hero worship has already begun. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“I haven’t,” Itachi says through his teeth. Meaning: _I have noticed, and it makes me think about my brother, which gives me unwanted emotions, therefore we are done talking about this._

“Fair enough,” Kisame says easily. “The point is, once I see him fight, I’ll know. There are only a handful of opponents on this job that I wouldn’t at least let him face for a few moments. The real problem is just how crowded the scene will be.”

“So you’d prefer to execute the mission as written, rather than engage the civilians as well.”

“At his skill level, a mob of miners swinging shovels would more dangerous than taking on those samurai one at a time. Excepting Bandit-hime herself, obviously. I want to fight her myself.”

“If you want. I have no preference. Very well, we have a few options for keeping the mob out of our way. The easiest would simply be to attack while they’re sleeping and make it quick. We could lock them in their bunkhouses to make sure, but I doubt they’d be able to mobilize in under fifteen minutes.”

“Heh.” Fifteen minutes. To shinobi of their caliber, fifteen minutes is an aeon. Mirya’s slower, of course, but Kisame can carry him if they want to move fast. “Good. Then we can bring him. And on that topic… do you smell the ocean? I think we’re nearly to the coast road.”

“Thank Amaterasu. I’m _desiccated_.”

Kisame pokes Itachi’s cheek and rubs his fingers together. “Spores! Quickly, to the smugglers’ cave, we can grow a whole crop of tiny Uchihas!”

“I’m being bullied. I need an adult.”

* * *

Itachi’s chest is aching by the time they’re looking down on the nameless fishing village. He’s glad of the excuse to sit down on a stone and rest for a moment. From the coast road turnoff, the whole village is laid out below them, and he expects to spot Mirya’s chakra with a casual sweep of sharingan.

That… doesn’t happen.

After a slower sweep, and an even slower and more scowling one, he admits, “I don’t see him. Could he be down at the smugglers’ cave? Why would he go there, though?”

“Because he’s twelve?”

“Thirteen,” Itachi corrects absently as he tries one more time, focusing on the notch in the bay’s far arm where the cave is hidden. It’s out of range of his chakra sensing, but with sharingan he’d be able to see if there was a boat beached there, and there isn’t. 

“Oh, was it actually his birthday when we left? I assumed he only said that to get people talking. We should give him something.”

“You’re sure the cave is unreachable from land without wall-walking?”

“Or climbing gear, I suppose. Can you really see that far? Impressive. Samehada says he’s been here recently, anyway. He’s probably just out fishing.” Kisame’s form ripples as he walks past, as if passing behind a waterfall, and he emerges with brown skin and blunt teeth, the sword on his back transformed to a large hiking pack.

Itachi rises, stifling a sigh. “Am I your wife again? That’s always so awkward.”

“You could be Mirya’s brother.” 

The way he says it, Kisame clearly believes it’s not an option; that Itachi is too avoidant to play that role even for an hour or two, even under a henge. Yes, maybe hearing Mirya call him ‘aniki’ would be… upsetting. But Mirya doesn’t have a brother, and they don’t know what he will have told the locals, chatty thing that he is. Itachi roughs in his henge with a quick sweep of chakra and then fine-tunes it while he fixes his hair. Kisame, noticing he’s not following, looks back with eyebrows raised.

“Oh, of course,” Kisame says.

Itachi’s got a hair elastic in his teeth, and replies only with a shrug. His fingers (pale pink instead of cream, nails unvarnished, freckles and little scars and boat-handling callus filling in moment by moment) flick his hair (now honey colored with a slight wave) into a sloppy braid and coil it at the nape of his neck. He secures the rough bun with the elastic and a senbon made to look like a whalebone kanzashi.

His clothing is taken directly from a woodcut of Uzu fisherwomen spearing octopus that he saw in the library of the Hokage’s residence. Only for a moment and years ago, but he selfishly used his sharingan to memorize the book of art prints, and so he has them all now to look at whenever he likes. The only addition he makes to the loose blue-green yukata and knee-length shorts is a bandeau top, because he suspects the artist took some license in making the octopus divers’ breasts bare. He’s made himself fairly flat-chested, but there’s still no need to invite prurience. He hangs his mission pack from one freckled shoulder with his sword, transformed to a harpoon like Mirya’s, secured crosswise beneath it. He spreads his arms, inviting Kisame to critique the transformation.

Kisame points to his own face, finger swooping back and forth: “Eyes. Too blue. The fry’s are more of a faded indigo. Hmm… bit paler toward the center — good. The rest is perfect. You probably don’t look a damn thing like the real Leila, but he’ll know you’re playing her and respond correctly.”

“Just don’t make me introduce myself. I know I don’t say it right.”

Half an hour’s slow civilian stroll down the dusty switchback, the tiny houses growing with each turn, and at last they reach the village’s sole crossroad, and the bar-with-one-room-to-rent it calls an inn. The thick-armed woman who’s been leaning against the doorpost watching them approach is probably the owner, Yoko. She spares them having to open the subject, as soon as they’re within conversational distance, by pointing at Itachi and announcing, “I have a pretty good idea who you’re here for.”

Playing a role is always easier than he expects, once he gets started. He gives a grin and shrug that’s just like Mirya’s, and sees the confirmation take hold in Yoko’s eyes. Before he can speak, though, Kisame claps his shoulder to get his attention and points down toward the bay.

Out on the bright turquoise water, a little orange and blue dot perches on the curve of a somewhat larger greenish white dot. The sea froths oddly beyond it. “What.”

“That’s him, isn’t it? The hell is he doing?” Kisame leans forward and squints, like that’s going to help.

Itachi shades his eyes, and activates his sharingan under the cover of the henge. That’s Mirya, all right. He’s sitting on the keel of an upside-down rowboat, sunburned and soaking wet. He seems to be using his water release as a method of propulsion, though it’s making more foam than thrust. As they watch, he does something wrong and the boat flips over, throwing him off. After a horrible, heart-stopping moment, he pops up laughing. Climbs into the now right-side-up but half-swamped boat to try again.

“What the _hell_ , though,” Yoko drawls disbelievingly.

Kisame says lightly, “He’s obviously having fun.”

“He’s going to drown himself,” Itachi snaps. The boat capsizes again with a gigantic splash. Itachi flings his hands in the air. “Foolish little brother!”


	11. LMGTFY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody says 'a lot of hair' and everyone thinks 'Madara', it's automatic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kisame and itachi use 'he' for orochimaru because they never thought to ask, and oro legit doesn't care about pronouns (or what people think of them in any way) so they never bother correcting anyone.

Mirya quits fooling around when he notices Yoko is waiting on the beach with a couple other people. He unhooks the oar from its brackets and paddles to shore the normal way. 

At first he thinks they’re strangers. Then he recognizes Kisame’s face, differently colored as it is, and remembers about henge. He can’t do that trick yet, but he did read about it. Which means the blonde girl… oh no. Oh Itachi. Good effort? Itachi is probably not _trying_ to be mean. Kisame told him a shinobi controls his emotions, and he supposes this is good practice. It helps when he gets close enough to sense their chakra. That hasn’t changed. He shoves the homesick feelings behind him and waves cheerily. “Leila, what are you doing here?”

Itachi crosses his… her? Her arms and scowls. “What are _you_ doing, Mirya? You’re gonna drown yourself!”

It’s weird hearing Itachi sound so casual. “I’m a good swimmer,” he reminds indignantly. “I can swim like a bear. I can swim forty miles.”

“You can get clonked on the head when the boat flips is what you can do!”

“Uhh.” She’s got a point. “Well… I didn’t?”

She stomps forward to help him pull his borrowed boat up the beach and dump the water out. “Also, dumbass, using water release in front of people? You know there are still bounties out for surviving bloodlines.”

He did not, in fact, know that, but he recognizes he’s being informed now, so he looks appropriately shamefaced. “Sorry, nee-chan. The people here are nice, though. They wouldn’t —”

Yoko’s been watching this with her brows drawing lower by the sentence. “Are you a shinobi?” she accuses. “You said you’re a harpooner!”

“I am!” he defends, hands up, not at all sure how he’s supposed to be responding to this.

Kisame finally speaks up to break the tension. “No, the kids just have a little chakra and think it’s a toy — and yes, Leila, I’m including you, anyone can see you’re way too strong for a girl your size. They’re probably descended from some shinobi clan bastard or other, so they should _be more careful_.”

“We’ve always been fishers,” Mirya sulks.

Itachi crosses her arms under her nearly-nonexistent breasts. “We’ve also always been horny, so the Captain’s got a point. Remember Grandma.”

By sheer coincidence, Mirya did have a famously lecherous grandmother, so his burst of sputtering laugher is genuine. Yoko’s laugh is more of a dry chuckle, but she’s not suspicious anymore. She jerks her head in the direction of her bar: “Get that above the tideline and then come get some food in you. Y’all are gonna have to share a room. I only have the one. I guess it won’t be a problem if you’re all used to tiny bunks, though, will it?” she adds with a wry look at Mirya, who gives a sheepish one in return.

Mirya points out where he borrowed the boat from. After Yoko’s gone a ways up the road, Kisame just picks it up like it’s a wicker coracle, not a two-seat dinghy of solid wood. Itachi raises an eyebrow and says, “What’s this about tiny bunks?”

“She thinks I sleep in the closet, so now I have to sleep in the closet.” Yeah, no, that’s not super informative, is it? “Stuff happened.”

“That’s not ominous or anything,” Itachi comments.

“Okay, so… do you guys know people named Tobi, Konan, and Oro-sama?”

From the stares, that’s a yes. Kisame says, “Tell us later in private. We’re staying in character for now. I’m the captain of that tuna boat you mentioned. The owner of the fleet is in financial trouble and I want to set up as independent. I got a line on a used boat in the capitol, so we’re headed west. Your sister convinced me to go on foot so we could look for you on the way.”

“That’s a lot of backstory for a one-night stay,” Mirya squints. “We're leaving in the morning, right?”

Kisame shoots a concerned glance at Itachi, who scowls back. Kisame nods like he’s conceding something. Mirya wonders what he missed there.

Itachi says, “Never skimp on your cover. You can’t know what might threaten it. This one’s not deep at all, as such things go. Kisame’s using the tactic of leaving hooks to current events so people will fill the rest out themselves — the organized crime boom in Wave _is_ undoubtedly affecting fishing fleet owners on the coast of Tea. To someone hearing our cover, then, the mention of this will register as independent confirmation, even though it isn’t really.”

“You know a lot about how people think, don’t you?”

Looking vaguely discomfited, Itachi murmurs, “I suppose that’s part of the job.” Then they’re too close to Yoko’s to keep talking about it, and she perks back into character effortlessly. “Now that everybody and their dog knows you can piss outta your hands —“

“Hey!”

“— What the hell were you even doing out there? Besides flipping somebody else’s dinghy fifty times.”

“If I shoot the water out fast enough it pushes the boat the opposite direction. Like _brrrrr_ —“ he aims a narrow jet of water directly at Itachi’s face. 

Itachi could definitely dodge, but apparently she thinks Leila couldn’t. “You little shit!” she splutters, and grabs for him. Mirya laughs while he gets noogied to death. This, at least, is a lot like the real Leila.

They keep up the act through dinner, but it’s more fun than effort. He and Itachi have a chopstick fight, exchange teasing banter, and generally show that they’re really glad to be together again, but with the understanding that it’d be awkward to say it out loud. It’s pretty sincere on Mirya’s end. Even though it was only for a few days, he’s not used to being alone. Kisame gossips with Yoko about the fishing economy and the weather. The weather isn’t small talk to fishers. It’s a big damn deal. His news that the water’s been unusually warm off Degarashi makes her spit curses, get out the the good homemade umeshu, and pour tiny cups of it for Mirya and Itachi, even though she’s never let Mirya near anything alcoholic before. Apparently that’s absolutely terrible news and they’re all one hundred percent boned.

When they go up to the room — Kisame having given Yoko a thousand ryou for the extra meals and bedding, waving off her attempt to hand him back half of it — Itachi produces a scroll from a pouch covered by illusion, tosses it up, triggers it in midair, and sends glowing seals flashing onto every wall. “Now we can speak freely.” 

“That? Was so. Cool.” Mirya hurries to look at the fallen scroll, but it’s blank now. 

“I can lend you some books on sealing if you want.” The illusion of not-really-very-Leila-but-good-effort drops. Itachi is dusty and tired-looking underneath. He has baggy eyes, he’s pale, his hair is stringy. He needs a soaky bath and a good night’s sleep, he obviously hasn’t been taking care of himself at _all_ , the dumbass.

Rather than forewarn him of the coming coddle-storm, Mirya asks casually, “Why’s warm water off Digashi bad?”

“Degarashi,” Kisame corrects. “It means poor fishing and more storms. Fish prefer the cold currents, because upwelling water brings nutrients from below — isn’t it the same where you come from?”

“I’m sure that part’s the same, but our prey is more about seasonal migrations, I guess. The salmon are gonna run in the spring no matter what the ocean currents are doing. The whales are gonna come for that summer plankton bloom even if they’re hungry when they arrive. I mean, we do have a warm current going north just offshore and a colder one heading south a few days out. But I don’t think they change much. We don’t get deep currents just crapping out.”

Before Mirya can ask Kisame for the shark’s-eye perspective on those deep currents, Itachi clears his throat. “As we are not actually employed as fishers, this is irrelevant. Tell me how you know those names you mentioned.”

Mirya doesn’t see how something of such economic importance can be _irrelevant_ , but he grants that this is probably more important just at the moment. “This is gonna be somewhat vague, because I was on a lot of drugs,” he begins.

There’s a lot of frowns going back and forth during his recitation. At the end of it, Kisame comments, “Disturbing.”

“So they really are Fake Akatsuki?”

“What? Oh, no, they’re who they said they are, and interviewing you was reasonable, though I wish Konan had kept a tighter leash on Orochimaru. I wouldn’t put it past him to overdose you so he can record the side effects.”

Itachi puts in, “He was exiled from Konoha for experimenting on children. Many of them died. Don’t volunteer for anything.”

Mirya pouts. “Aww, but I want drugs. How am I supposed to see ghosts? I didn’t get trained to trance sober yet!”

The look Itachi gives Kisame conveys _are you hearing this shit?_ clearly enough that Mirya has to stick his tongue out at him. Kisame’s not paying attention to their byplay, though. His skinny eyebrows are scrunched. He looks like he’s going to scold Mirya for going in the woods unarmed during the moose rut. Like he’s done something that was much more dangerous than he realizes, and the point of the scolding won’t be to make him feel bad, but to make absolutely sure he understands that doing it again will get him goddamn killed. “Tell me _exactly_ what you said to Tobi about the ghosts.”

Itachi’s attention snaps to him with an almost audible click. Mirya swallows. “Uh. I said. I said ‘You have ghosts on you’ I guess more than once. Then I said ‘One loves you and one hates you. The one that loves you is on your shoulders, she’s a little girl and she’s mad in a loving way like your mom when you broke something. The one that hates you is in your heart, he makes you angrier, he has a lot of hair.’ When I said that, he went real still and his chakra was like _uhhhhhh_ so I could tell he knew exactly what I was talking about.” The eyebrows are doing the thing even more, and Itachi’s even paler, and Mirya’s starting to wonder if he screwed them somehow. “What’d I do, Boss?”

Kisame gives a slight headshake. “Is that all you told him?”

“I said to listen to the girl and ignore the man, because the man is full of bad ideas. He did his swirly vanish thing then. I didn’t see him again, but he must’ve come back later to bring me here, unless other people can do that too.”

“Itachi-san, do you happen to have, among your portable library, a book on shinobi history, with pictures?”

“No, but I have an encyclopedia with portraits of famous shinobi,” Itachi says grimly, shuffling through his sealing scrolls. He has multiple seals full of books, it turns out, so he has to try a couple before he finds the hefty volume. Once he’s produced it, though, Kisame finds the entry he wants in seconds. He turns the book to face Mirya. Mirya doesn’t wait for him to ask, he just plants his finger on the face he recognizes.

“That’s the guy. His hair was white, though. I guess he lived to get old…” He bends to read the tiny print. “Uchiha Madara… hey, Itachi, is this your great-grandpa or something? Sorry to inform you, but he’s an asshole, heh.”

There’s no reply. He glances up. Both his bosses look like they’re about to puke.

“I uh. I screwed up, didn’t I? Boss? Shark Boss? Crow Boss? … Guys?”

“No, Mirya-kun, you didn’t screw up,” Kisame finally says, in a soft voice that trumpets Impending Murder louder than a war cry. “Tobi did.”


End file.
